Site of Doppos’s Lodge, sections 6-9 — Web Exclusive
By Kiwao Nomura
Translated by Kyoko Yoshida; Forrest Gander
6 (lightly, with ceremony)
and so, it’s as though I’m
wheeling wheeling, wheeling adrift,--
and then the wheeling shifts, how strange,
to a rustling behind tree leaves, alarmed earshells,
and the peak of the place-name where awareness fogs over,
so leading, incessantly, forward
and, incessantly deviating, going toward,--
Airspace Airspace
Earthly airspace
Earthly how so
Drift through airspace
In the crawly, wriggling city,
a white-haired Lear wanders from a vacant factory, slithering along, wriggling through the rigid city, through the slip-slop margins of a pageantry in which the imprint of Old Edo comes clear, wriggling, crawling, rigid, weary, ensnared in the back beat of science and engineering, where summer grasses dance a taciturn ghost dance, in the wriggling, crawling, rigid, ensnared city, in a thicket of shrubs where the flesh of epochs absorbs the sounds of place-names as ears absorb ashes,--
Doppo earthly
Earthly drifting
How so how so
Doppo drifting
stay, imprint of my beloved,
imprint of my beloved, I am, ensnared and weary of, --
crawl
crawltwist
crawltwistcross
crawltwisterectcrossinterlace
crawltwisterectdeviatecrossinterlacewear
wearinterl
acecrossdeviateerecttwistcrawl
interlacecrosserecttwistcrawl
crosstwistcrawl
twistcrawl
acecrossdeviateerecttwistcrawl
interlacecrosserecttwistcrawl
crosstwistcrawl
twistcrawl
On the way to the site of Doppo’s lodge,
lodge
site
toward, Doppo, going, through
brimming eyes,—
wheeling wheeling wheeling adrift
earthly airspace adrift adrift
7 (molto contabile)
Infinitely there
to be traced by branching fingers
a throng of place-names
there/ infinitely
there.
As for instance a rockslide serpentines/ in the distance silently serpentines/ glimpse of brute geometry serpentines/ spilling its slough into a river/ spilling its slough into a river /the river narrowing the river dipping under/ the city’s edge and depth the green/ Midori enviously stretches out forever
Infinitely there, infinitely
there though surpassed
and infinitely inaccessible/ there
a throng of place-names
apprehension delineates
flocks of feathery footprints dancing
in flocks.
Or as if foam were stitched together
what reverberations/ what
but the sound of phantom snowdust
in the distance a rockslide serpentines
Midori enviously stretches out
along the curve of spine not willowy enough
to sidestep
there/ or there
to be given the slip.
And yet another flock of footprints
molto cantabile
furioso
or molto funebre.
8 (with the calendar of season words)
There
infinitely there/ as if there
were a place-name hidden away
infinitely repeated, whose beckoning ripples-out and
infinitely agitated, whose simulacral depth
eddies/back
back/world
world/back
back/eddies
there.
So the season words if nothing else.
As, for instance, in the washed out azure sky
a hazy egg yolk moon will soon rise
unbearably summery
there/ lingering where
the swelter of midsummer’s script is
written across paper thin as a puppy’s tongue
nevertheless/ there
the shower of cidada chants dries up
the encounter between invisible stars and their cocoon fades infinitely,
dimming
into the deep/ into the exhausted journey
infinitely ants
infinitely Alpha Centauri
cooling off.
Either the poet Seiho/or Hakyô/or Doppo’s lodge
cooling off.
Each place-name stands for
this kind of infinitude
infinitely there/ there
where a net of anonymous voices
showers down like distant rain
cooling off/ or on the shadow-side
as though hidden away in wild rushes
from the unknown/ to the unknown
infinitely abiding through the reverberations of that place-name’s implosion
there
infinitely there.
9 (coda, of nothing)
It is,
infinitely there,
there the place-name folded like violet petals,
asked,
when— when would it open itself,
it is,
infinitely there,
infinitely attempting to arrive there, in the spackle of danced footprints,
already gone,
already gone,
it is,
infinitely there,
that beam, that afterglow of conversation,
the dust of those genes, that fart,
that thicket of shrubs,—
it is,
infinitely there,
is it one part after another, is it one ridge after another,
hoping for a place-name to be engraved there,
or for its trace at least,—
we are one after another overcome,
it is, infinitely there.
Read more world literature at TWO LINES Online.
Kiwao Nomura was born October 20, 1951, in Saitama Prefecture. A leading writer of the post-war generation, his work has been translated into many languages and published in magazines abroad, especially in France and the United States. In 2007, he organized The Festival of International Poetry: Toward the Pacific Rim, and in December of 2005 he served as a director of the “Japan-European Contemporary Poetry Festival in Tokyo.”
Forrest Gander is the author of books of poems, translations, and prose, much of it published by New Directions. He has edited several anthologies and translated individual books by Latin American writers. Two of his books of translation have been PEN Translation Award Finalists. A United States Artist Rockefeller fellow, he is also the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim, Whiting, and Howard foundations. He is a professor of English and comparative literature at Brown University.
Kyoko Yoshida was born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan. Her stories have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Chelsea, The Cream City Review, and The Beloit Fiction Journal, among other places. She is working on a novel about the visit of American Negro League baseball players to Japan in the 1930s. Recently a Visiting Scholar at Brown University, she teaches English at Keio University and lives in Yokohama.
Published with the permission of Omnidawn Publishing (Richmond, CA) from Spectacle & Pigsty: Selected Poems of Kiwao Nomura (2011).