the uncertain touch of memory

I really do like this pictured, 1981 volume of Japanese Poetry, which I bought a couple of years ago from a wonderful bookshop on Botanic Avenue in Belfast ...

... and here's a famous poem from within, written by Hakushū Kitahara, on the subject of memory:


Memory

Is a memory, like the uncertain touch past noon
of a firefly with a red nape,
an airy bluish glow
that does not seem to glow?

Or a faint flower on a cereal grass,
a gleaner's song,
the white flare of feathers plucked from a dove
on the warm southside of a wine cellar?

If it's a tone, something of a flute,
an evening when a toad croaks
and a physician's drug is fondly remembered,
the harmonica someone plays in the half light.

If it's a smell, that of velvet,
the eyes of a card queen,
the somewhat lonesome feeling
on the clownish Pierrot's face.

Not as hard to bear as a dissolute day,
not with the luminous pain of fever,
nonetheless, soft as late spring,
a memory, or else, my autumn's legend?

---

Hakushū Kitahara (1885 – 1942)

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