Читать книгу From a Three-Cornered World - James Masao Mitsui - Страница 8
ОглавлениеI / from Journal of the Sun 1974
Destination: Tule Lake Relocation CenterMay 20, 1942
She had raised the window
higher
than her head; then
paused
to lift wire spectacles,
wiping
sight back with a wrinkled
hand-
kerchief. She wanted to watch
the old
place until the train’s passing
erased
the tarpaper walls and tin roof,
she had
been able to carry away
so little.
The fingers of her left
hand
worried two strings
attached
to a baggage tag
flapping
from her
lapel.
Photograph of a Child,Japanese-American Evacuation,Bainbridge Island, Washington,March 30, 1942
The soft sound of his steps on the pier
is obscured by the heavy footfall
of the adults, rippling the planked deck.
One hand reaches above his head
to wrap around father’s ring finger,
the other clutches a balsa model
of a U.S. fighter plane, held
upside down against his chest.
He is the only one who uses this time
to peer between the cracks at his feet,
trying to see the shiny ribs of water,
imagine a monstrous flounder hugging
the sediment, both eyes staring
from the top of its flat head.
Picture of a Japanese Farmer, Woodlands,California, May 20, 1942
His waiting becomes a time to hear thoughts, the sound
of unseen sparrows, the glance for any movement
from a road on the other side of dark eyes.
It is the tossing down of a cigarette,
the quiet imprint of a twisting foot.
Behind him a butcher paper sign on a mailbox
sells what will be awkward tomorrow. Feet in black
Sunday shoes are stable as the block of wood on end
used for a seat. Elbows on knees, he looks hard
at the packed earth. Another cigarette
waits between fingers like an artist’s brush.
Willows drift sap in their shadows, coating the man,
the ground and the top half of a discarded oil drum
on its side. The bottom has no viscous coat.
Dust will not adhere for this plain reason.
Section Hand, Great Northern Railway
I. LAMONA, 1953
Finding my father’s current
wine bottle slouched
in a wooden rainbarrel, one night,
I grabbed it by the neck
like an old, long-handled
grenade and tossed it over our
garage, towards the creek.
The dark glass tumbled,
somersaulted into the night,
a pint of used blood.
I planted another bottle
filled with rainwater and fragments
of dead leaves, hid, and could
only laugh when he came out
for a drink, sputtered and swore
at a world that wouldn’t understand
half-Japanese, half-English.
II. SKYKOMISH, 1913. A PHOTOGRAPH
With eyebrows like black smears
of stage paint my father, at 25,
takes a stance on our front porch.
No one would dare brush past
his dark face, his pockets
conceal strong small hands.
No one would dare to tip
his bowler hat, ridicule
a checkered tie, or snap
those elastic bands anchoring
the loose sleeves of his shirt.
Links of a watch chain dangle
in an arc from a belt loop
to the watch pocket in his vest.
He is a match for the chair beside him:
its wood, carved like the ruffled
wing feathers of a pheasant.
The Morning My Father Died, April 7, 1963
The youngest son, I left the family inside and stood
alone in the unplanted garden by a cherry tree
we had grown ourselves, next to a burn barrel
smoldering what we couldn’t give away or move
to Seattle. Looking over the rusty edge I could see
colors of volcano. Feathers of ash floated
up to a sky that was changing. I stared at the sound
of meadowlarks below the water tank
on the basalt cliff where the sun would come.
I couldn’t stop smelling sagebrush, the creosote
bottoms of posts; the dew that was like a thunderstorm
had passed an hour before. Thoughts were trees
under a lake; that moment was sunflower, killdeer
and cheatgrass. Volunteer wheat grew strong
on the far side of our place along the old highway.
Undeberg’s rooster gave the day its sharper edge,
the top of the sun. Turning to go back inside,
twenty years of Big Bend Country
took off like sparrows from a startled fence.
Watching Bon Odori from a Vantage Pointwith My Three Children
It was from a slope you earned by clinging.
The sidewalk was a crowd watching a street dance
of peasants hoeing rows of white radish
below strings of rice paper lanterns.
The drumbeat grew constant as surf
after days of ocean; it became a heartbeat.
The footwork of the drummer, the way each swing
had meaning and was sure
reminded me of my father just before retiring.
Drunk on payday night, he would sing on our front porch
a Japanese song that meant nothing to me
surrounded by a small town, sagebrush
and hills that stayed out of the way of a creek.
Clapping hands between each pause
of thumping foot, father wove 130 pounds of rhythm
with biceps I always admired. That’s what swinging
a pick or sledge hammer could do. Thirteen years old.
I would come up behind the ritual of his dance,
wrap suntanned arms around his chest, capturing
darker arms, and lift in a half-circle
to carry him back inside, out of the light
that took the shape of our front door
fallen down. Once inside he would want to do some judo,
telling me the story I had heard
longer than anyone in the family.
Not the oldest son, at 16 he had left their farm
in Nagano, gone to Tokyo, a descendent of samurai,
and had been thrown out of a club
that taught lessons in self-defense.
Right into the street, he would brag, just like this
as I held his still-strong grip and pulled him
up off the floor where I had tackled him,
not knowing judo. When you fall, he said,
before you land, hit the floor harder first
with your hand and arm; it won’t hurt.
Because It Is Close and My Mother Is 72
From our booth my mother watches a Chinese busboy
who looks older than she is, and can’t use good English.
He talks to those who don’t understand
with smiles and nods. Wearing a circle
of white cardboard for a hat with no top,
he displays one gold and three
missing teeth. His back bends over a tray of cups
like the top branch in a tree full of starlings.
He gestures to a waitress, he’s doing his job.
I recall my father telling me about ten cents
a day in 1910, working for the Great Northern.
The old man wipes at the floor next to us,
using an overflow of water and effort.
My mother looks away at the wall; he finishes,
dragging a darkened mop over deep red
and tan blocks of tile. One mopstring lags,
trailing evaporation that follows him
through swinging metal doors.
Our food on a tray passes the other way.
Splashes mark the wall near where he worked.
Clearing her throat my mother would rather
he get up earlier, mop before we come. She bunches
her face in a mask and adds, the food
is ten times better at Hong Kong
downtown; more high tone. Serving her, I nod.
I can feel the napkin ball under the knuckles
of her richly veined fist, a crumpled white blossom.
Shrike on Dead Tree
—after a painting by Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645)
Steadfastly
up the
single
brush
stroke
of its
trunk
a worm
crawls
toward
a butcher
bird
perched
on
an upper
barren
branch.
Ōhashi in a Shower
—after a painting by Hiroshige Ando (1797–1858)
Beyond the river
a grey wood is seen dimly.
Like black string
the rain falls
long
straight
slanting.
On a wooden bridge
six figures
divide
in a scurry
for shelter.
Droplets
pucker the indigo
water, smack
the planks
of the bridge
and a forgotten
raft about to float
downstream.
Painting of a HermitageShūbun, Fifteenth Century
A teahouse fits a bamboo grove by a lake.
In an open window a man
stops reading, studies a tree
twisting like tributaries to a river.
The pine drops dry needles,
green cones, over the edge of a cliff.
Somewhere out of the painting,
seedlings rise from earth
like men shrugging their shoulders.
Nisei: Second-Generation Japanese American
They grow over the Yangtze, the plum rains
grow over water that drops
gently to the wideness of the East China Sea.
Farmers in Kyushu are caught by the floating clouds,
caught square in the middle of their fields,
squinting to see who it is
standing there on the dirt bank, the mud
in the soft rain, soft as the leading edge of a cloud.
I write this on a day that has twisted away
from doubt. Happy to be here
still I have a place on that grey continent,
far home of my grandfathers,
those figures I never saw except in pictures.
Photographs yellow and brown as old newsprint,
smudges of thought, of fingers and skin.
Time to realize the importance of rain.
Rain on the ground,
and rain still falling.
