Crowded Ocean

Crowded Ocean

I.
Out of the rolling ocean came a drop gently to me.

It whispered, “I love you, but soon I die,
I have traveled a long way merely to look at you, to touch you,
I couldn’t die until I once looked at you,
Because I feared I might afterward lose you.”

Now we have met, we have looked and we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean,
We are not so much separated.

Behold the earth, the cohesion of it all, how perfect!
But as far as me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us.
As for an hour carrying us diverse,
Yet cannot carry us diverse forever.

Be not patient, a little space,
As I salute the air,
The ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown is for you my love.

II.
It is not you alone who make the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down on me also,
The best I had done scarred me, blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality?

It isn’t you alone who knows what its like to be evil,
I am one, who knows what it was like to be evil,
I also knitted an old knot of contradictory,
Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, and grudged.

I had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was disobedient, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the pig, not wanting in me,
This cheating look, this playful word, this false wish, it’s not wanting in me.

I was one with the rest of the days and haps of the rest,
Lived the same life with the rest,
The same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Played the part that still looks back on the actor or actress.

The same old role,
The role that is what we make it,
As great as we like, or as small as we like,
Sometimes it was both great and small.

III.
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat,
The musical shuttle I heard each night,
Came once out of the midnight hour.

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond,
Where the child wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the showered halo,
Leaving her bed behind; so cold.

Up from the mystic play of shadows,
Twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of fruit,
The memories of the bird still call to me.

Your memories sad sister,
The fitful risings and falls I heard,
Under that yellow half-moon risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist.

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From those lovely spoken words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than every other,
For now, they start to revisit the scene.

IV.
A woman, yet by these tears a little girl again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence song.

The solo melody sinking,
All else continuing, the stars shining,
The wind’s blowing, the bird’s notes continuously echoing,
With angry moans the fierce mother incessantly is mourning.

On the sands of the shore gray and rustling,
The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, dropping,
The face of the sea almost touching,
The girl ecstatic, with her bare feet in the waves.
Is it really towards your lover you sing, or me?
My words are sleeping, now I have heard you,
I know what I am now, I awake,
A thousand songs clearer and more sorrowful than yours.

V.
Echoes have started to live within me, never to die.
You sing by yourself, projecting me,
Never more shall I give in to you,
Never more shall I escape, never more the pain you bring.

Never more will the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never leave me as the peaceful child I was before,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
My soul cries.

The messenger is here, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me,
It lurks in the night somewhere near here,
If I am to have so much, let me have more!

A word then I will conquer it,
The word final, superior to all,
I fear it is chaos; I listen,
Subtle, sent up; what is it?!

How joys, horrors, human shapes, and all other shapes spring from graves,
All around me phantoms! You cover all the land, and all the sea!
I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile or frown at me,
This word, what is my destination?

VI.
This word.

Have you been whispering it all the time, you sea waves?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
Toward answering the sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not.

Whispering to me through night and day,
It lisped the low and delicious word “death”,
And again death, death, death, death!
Hissing melodies, not like the bird or my child’s heart.

Edging near as privately just for me, rustling at my feet,
Creeping steadily up to my ears,
Leaving me softly all over,
Death, death, death, death, death!

I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and sister,
That she sang to me in the moonlight on the gray beach,
With thousands of random songs.

My sister awaked from that hour in heaven,
With them the key, the word from the waves,
The strong and delicious word, creeping to my ears,
The sea whispered to me…”Love”!

by urabaka
posted on 01/10/2008