The Art of Being Alone: Poems 1952–2009

Listening to Mozart

160 Listening to Mozart モーツアルトを聴く人 (1995) The Pure Land I cannot escape from being me I’ve unabashedly exposed myself to everyone’s eyes: an ordinary combination of two eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth This may be because I’ve had something to hide When I was reunited with a friend who had just died in a room surrounded with soiled tiles he’d had his blood and innards removed and was thrown onto a dissecting table as if he were a ship-wrecked canoe He was not carrying anything, hiding anything any more What’s left to us was just fluorescent light one might confuse with daylight Brightness is scarier than darkness Against the shimmering sea, any ugly thing looks beautiful Facing the unlimited we return to a grain of sand What reaches our ears is the sound of waves, so unlike jeers or laughter. . . . If I end up at the so-called Pure Land and if Buddha or the angels see right through me what facial expressions should I show? I am hiding what I surely would have lost if my life were eternal Listening to Mozart 161 not knowing that I am hiding it Surrounded by people’s glum looks, covering my ears against clamoring lives fated to die I am amid motley shadows of trees in early winter The Ground When I sink my head in my pillow the ground pulls at me with great force with fearsome force that puts universal gravitation to shame I become as flat as a flounder at the bottom of the sea Only my eyes busily move but there isn’t much they can see If I am to be pulled into Hell, that might be something to look forward to but the ground doesn’t seem willing to allow me such luxury all it wants to do is to keep me flattened onto its face because I’m liable to forget that I was born out of dust But soon I fall asleep In my dream I spring up to the sky again and again feeling jubilant, accompanied by a passage from a certain Requiem, kicking against the asphalt with my Reeboks, flipping around a telephone pole The model plane I made when I was young was named TOTTERING ANGEL It always fluttered up and fell right away vertically down to the ground From those days onward the ground has been teaching me a lesson: nowhere but on the ground I can live or die 162 Listening to Mozart Listening to Mozart he is curled up like an infant his eyes are wandering over the wallpaper peeling away as if it were the blue sky He looks as if his lover, invisible, is whispering into his ear Melody, becoming a query, vexes him but he cannot answer its question because it answers itself right away moving ahead of him loving whispers, so unguarded, directed to the whole world caresses too tender to exist in this world prophesies too cruel to materialize yes to veto every possible no Listening to Mozart he stands up he pulls himself free from the music embracing Mother heads down the stairs to the street looking for queries he can answer™ モーツアルトを聴く人 • 1995 ...