Riverwilt
The riverwilt I must set down
Before the riverwilt pulls me down
Can I get across—Walk across?
(In front of the house, theyâre not there now, but in an oak tree, where branches spread out like a maze, theyâre not there now, but like a place where echoes gather, where tree spirits gather, I climbed to a fork in the tree, and just as I was dozing off, no thatâs not right, reading some erotic, no thatâs not right, more gynaecological, probably that kind of book)
Can I get across—
Walk across?
(Reading that kind of book excitedly, unexpectedly my mother, unexpectedly)
The transient
Border realm of snake
Its breathing gentleness of skin,
(Thatâs right, my mother unexpectedly came to the foot of the tree, thereâs a snake in the house, she said, her face pale, I jumped down toward that writhing neck omen of bad fortune, I loped toward it, but the book, what did I)
Getting up in the morning
Unsearched-for light blazing
Astride the steam in the kitchen
(What did I do with the book? Empty-handed nervously, so nervously, we)
Going up the elevator
Going down the elevator
(Want something to believe in? Forever wanting something to believe in? If so, here under the sun, the sky drooping wet pig hair, move ahead, with smart alveolus, ahead from the aimlessness of reality, from the certainty of imagination, and keep standing)
Wrapped
In those legs, Yuko Goes All-Out
That poster, as if breathless at the poster
West Entrance, Shinjuku Station,
At the end, the far end
Of the windless Keio Mall,
A soft wall, out of sight
Until we vanish together.
(But anyway the snake, its head raised, came out from a lintel, thatâs right, theyâre not there now, the raised head facing us, an ancestral spirit has come to see how things are, so you mustnât kill it, said my mother.)
No, thatâs not right
If itâs a spirit send it out on the water
If itâs
Like those great complexes of muscles
That are not here now
(So encouraged by my mother, I took the snake, clinging to the end of a bamboo stick, clinging, to the stream behind the house, to the stream like golden bovine flow, I took the snake, the snake took me, the snake via me, I donât know which)
The stalk of the sun
The ultimate life power of the sun
(I donât know which, but anyway, the cause is far distant, far behind, instinctively I held my breath, I pushed down into place the rustling leaves, the rustling words)
With smart alveolus,
Listening to the prattle of the wind
The bracken shoots of memory passed,
(Looking back, my mother was not there, instead, a myrtle tree, and what of the snake? At the end of my arm, at the end of the stick at the end of my arm, it was already a path, stretching out)
Our bodies
Cut up into parts. How dare they?
A sudden mound. How could it?
Saying how in the blood of those who try to live ordinary lives,
Uncrushed like grass underfoot
Is mixed bitter diluvial earth.
(Like a light yearning)
Read in the inedible stalks of kerria flowers
On the sick
River bank
What
Worries
May come flooding in
Waves
(Waves? Stretching out, riverwilt? And unified with half-sleep I cannot follow back to those faint hundred forking branches, which though cut and cut, still grow, stretching out, human faces, protozoa.)
Yes, although our ancestorsâ
Beautiful desire for copulation blows like wind,
(Calling human faces, protozoa, making an extraordinary cross-section that really cannot be, repelling all water, I crowd together, I am the snake, the snake is me.)
There
As it were all meanings push together
And no meaning comes out
This is riverwilt
(For now Iâll just give it that name, repelling all water, still)
Can I get across—
Walk across?