Because Ameblo had been closed for a while for renewal, I visited “Kaze Maria” for the first time in a long time and found the following tanka poems.
The leaves of words, asking forever
whether what I write little by little is meaningless, scatter away.A lost key suddenly appears
in the back pocket of my jeans—how many days had it slept there?“Is this enough? Is this enough?” I list them one after another;
uneven letters shift, and it is spring.In tanka, large characters
appear here and there—perhaps they suit it well.
The first poem has a Wittgensteinian air. “What can be said can be said clearly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent,” perhaps.
The second has that feeling of “it happens.” It captures an everyday moment well, while also evoking the absurdity that something will not appear while you are looking for it.
The third sharply contrasts the colloquial “Is this enough? Is this enough?” thrown into literary language. It breaks after the fourth phrase, and when you suddenly lift your eyes from the page on which they had been resting, the spring scene in the fifth phrase is dazzling.
For some reason I cannot explain, I rather like the fourth poem.
The original order is different, but arranged this way, a story seems to emerge: from an intellectually resigned state, it surpasses the absurdity of reality; then, amid continued struggle and resistance, the air of spring teaches the preciousness of reality, leading at last to love for the reality before one’s eyes. 🙂
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