Untitled Poems I, IV, and V

Untitled Poems I, IV, and V Natsume Sōseki (bio) Translated from Chinese by Ryan Choi Keywords fantasy, winter, mortality, fear, traveling, pride, escape, rain I As the sharpened sword beheads the two-headed serpent,I shun the crude laughter and gossip of the mortal world.Thousands of autumns of virtue and vice are buried in the yellow of the earth,Under the sunny skies that forever shine on good and evil the same.The slightest breeze rumples the moon's portrait on the lake,The faintest drizzle snatches the blooming flowers from their branches.After drinking I sober up, and the winter cold digs into my bones—And I resolve to spend what life I have left alone in a mountain shack. End Page 164 IV By luck, high in the mountains, the witless traveler lights upon a nook to shelter in …Long ago, I bundled up my pride and ambitions, and cast them into the flames—My stubborn resolve, like a cast-iron bull, unmoved by spur or lash;My fears that came and then decamped as swiftly as the summer rains.The clear blue sky alone is the answer to a poet's unrest, justAs rolling the eyes excites the layman's mirthful laughs …At sunset, a battalion of mosquitoes storms into my study—Rising to my feet against a view of the peaks, I brandish my white silk fan. End Page 165 V Destroy the towers spiraling hundreds of feet into the air,And the waves will become like titans marching together on the Palace of the Moon,And the giant fish will dive deep into the hush beneath the thumping surf,And the shrewd falcon perched on the wharf will wait for safe passage to escape—Songs of the wind upon the sword in the spirit of bloodshed.Sealed in the privilege of my boredom, watching the rain drops fall on my pillow's edge,I scoff at the trials that a life of letters is sure to impose upon me …Smiling, I point at the emerald mountain range and step through the gates of Iyo city. End Page 166 Natsume Sōseki natsume sōseki (1867–1916), perhaps the most celebrated novelist of the modern age in Japan, is best known for Kokoro, I Am a Cat, and Botchan. A renowned scholar of English literature, who was among the first Japanese sent to England to study during the Meiji Restoration, Sōseki was also a prolific essayist and poet in the haiku and kanshi traditions. Something of a late bloomer, he wrote the majority of his works in the last decade of his life, which was cut short by a stomach ulcer. Ryan Choi ryan choi is the author of In Dreams: The Very Short Stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Three Demons: A Study on Sanki Saitō's Haiku. He is an editor at AGNI. His writings and translations have appeared in Harper's Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, The New Criterion, Raritan, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. He lives in Honolulu, where he was born and raised. Copyright © 2024 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.