Elichka

“Come sleep with me: We won't make Love, Love will make us.”
― Julio Cortázar

“Trees like traveling

A tree

is always

thinking of

the day when it will set out on its journey,

as it stands, rooted in one place,

immobile.

It flowers,

invites insects and the wind,

hurries to bear fruit,

whispering,

“somewhere far away,”

“somewhere far away.”

At last the birds peck at its fruit

and the wild beasts come to nibble.

A tree needs no backpack, no suitcase, no passport to travel.

It hitches a ride on a bird’s belly,

stealthily making its own airship,

and, when the day comes, it sets out abruptly,

into the sky.

The seed falls.

“Here’s a good place. I can see a lake.

I’ll stay here for a while.”

It becomes a seedling and puts down roots

and, like the tree from which it came,

it too begins to dream of the day it will set out on its own journey.

When I touch the trunk of a tree

I understand how it aches:

how it loves to travel

how it yearns to wander

how it writhes, longing to be a nomad.

translated by: Greg Vanderbilt”
― Ibaragi Noriko

“The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle