[For many years now, Hiroaki Sato has brought the
work of a range of Japanese experimental modernists into English, among the
latest of whom is Inuhiko Yomota, whose earlier book My Purgatory was published in 2015 by Red Moon Press in
Virginia. Sato describes Yomota, a
prolific writer in many areas, as follows: “Inuhiko Yomota (b. 1953) aptly
calls himself a tuttologista. One of
the most prolific Japanese writers on a wide variety of subjects and the most
internationally encompassing, Yomota has published more
than 100 books covering Japanese film, Asian film, literary criticism,
autobiography, arts, music, city theory, cooking, and manga, among other
things.” And Geoffrey O’Brien of Yomota’s amazing breadth & scope:
“Inuhiko Yomota … has written … a somber, passionate, highly colored cycle of poems, imbued with
intimations of ancient suffering and modern-day apocalyptic terror, and
candidly confronting the prospect of personal annihilation. The book’s tragic themes are offset by a
bracing and defiant bravura, inhabiting different eras and identities, passing
ghostlike through Carthage and Harbin and archaic Thrace, and conjuring with
awed detachment the bloody and inextricable histories embedded in millennia of
continually resonating language.” The
following from a larger work now in progress is a still further indication of Yomota’s & Sato’s latterday gift to us. (J.R.)]
A Beggar of Life
1
I climb the Mount of Purgatory.
No
longer, unlike Dante,
do
I have the stars’ protection or the Holy Woman’s consolation,
but
over the barren field of igneous rocks
do
I see only
discarded
condoms and plastic bottles
like
the jellyfish washed up on the shore.
What
thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross. . . [1]
Believing
stupidly in this old-fashioned monitory,
I’ve
lost many things.
Neither
the moon I thought I’d sealed in a plastic bag,
nor
the Arabic I learned by mouth to mouth, nor smiles
remain
any longer.
Where
in the world have I wandered into?
This
fearful mountain peak—
what
is it called?
Birds’
voices had ceased long ago.[2]
I
climb the mountain strewn with rubble—
will
there be somewhere
a
fountain waiting for me?
Is
there going to be a rivulet
where
I can immerse my tottering feet
soiled
with dust, covered with blisters?
2
I’m going to England, now.
I
can think of nothing but to go to England,
you
said.
I
didn’t respond one way or another,
and
you declared with serious eyes,
I’m
going there to find a green fuse.[3]
Your
mascara was swaying.
So
we
decided to exchange our most favorite records.
When
I offered Nico’s Banana,[4]
you
came back with Bowie’s Low.
There
was no hesitation.
The
solemn ritual was over in a second.
There
was no pledge, no promise.
You
then beat your debts at several hatters
and
rushed out.
Wait.
Was it The Rolling Stones that I exchanged?
Was
it the unpaid bills at the dentist that you beat?
When
time has passed,
images
of things collapse into haziness.
A
spectacle that couldn’t have happened
feels
like a gruesome fate
or
what you must have chiseled into your heart
dissipates,
before you know it,
like
a perfume bottle left without its cap.
The
heart slowly wears out.
Death
arrives
long
after that.
You
will not extend your hand again
to
the piles of records
in
the attic where rats’ droppings scatter.
Whether
you ever discovered a green fuse,
I
will never know, ever.
When,
in what way, shall we meet
the
news of each other’s death?
3
In Payatas[5]
I
was watching people dug out
of
collapsed grit and dirt after the rain.
Black
sand had swarmed into the open mouths
and
eye-sockets.
Everyone’s
eyes were closed quietly.
Rats
scurried incessantly all around.
Pain
and grief
nibbled
me like rats.
There
were times when you believed anything.
Soon
feeling not moved became the only salvation.
Everyone
was praying under the roofs with stones lined up on them.
But
I couldn’t pray.
Praying
had been exiled out of me.
Then,
invited,
I
went to eat a goat just slaughtered.
Hands
soiled black to the tips of their nails
stretched
one after another into the pot and grabbed the entrails.
I,
too, was slurping the juices covered with foam and ashes.
I
was eating my own entrails.
A
snow-white moon rose in the shadow of a deep-black mountain.
In
the distance pigs squealed.
Children,
sensing the arrival of the last truck,
alertly
ran up in the smoke,
vying
barefoot, scattering the rats.
Is
there any more mountain to climb?
I
cannot ascertain it.
In
the foul steam rising
rats’
sharp pointed teeth gleaming white
restlessly
chisel my flesh.
I
no longer even grab at my memory.
4
Who does Cordelia? It’s you.
I
can do only Mad Tom.[6]
In
this cold, busy-looking new century
a
dignified, old king is no more
and
stingy elder sisters are all gone.
Against
the hastily made plywood backdrop
Cordelia
says to the madman:
Learn
about the stars, even in prison,
know
the stars that will protect you.
But
the madman does not believe it.
All
stars are just corpses of light.
This
is my latest work.
I’ll
continue to write
until
my worn-out pencil
becomes
so short it can’t write any more,
until
my fingers rub on the paper.
Wearing-out
is my very sign.
We
are the only ones who have survived.
Nevertheless,
just as you cannot read my poem,
I
cannot recognize your star in the night sky.
I
climb the black mountain of grit and dirt,
feet
tripped by rats—
where
will you be watching me?
Cordelia,
your magically fake eyelashes,
your
silver foil hat gleaming with beads.
[1]
Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI.
[2]
John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”
[3]
Dylan Thomas, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
[4]
The album of the musical band Velvet Underground and Nico with a banana on the
cover designed by Andy Warhol in 1967.
[5]
A huge dumpsite in Quezon in the Philippines. On July 20, 2000, a landslide
killed 500 people.
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