:13:16
He wrote me: coming back through the Chiba coast
I thought of Shonagon's list,
:13:21
of all those signs one has only to name
to quicken the heart, just name.
:13:25
To us, a sun is not quite a sun unless it's radiant,
and a spring not quite a spring unless it is limpid.
:13:31
Here to place adjectives would be so rude
as leaving price tags on purchases.
:13:36
Japanese poetry never modifies.
:13:39
There is a way of saying boat, rock, mist, frog, crow,
hail, heron, chrysanthemum, that includes them all.
:13:47
Newspapers have been filled recently
with the story of a man from Nagoya.
:13:51
The woman he loved died last year and he drowned himself in work
Japanese stylelike a madman.
:13:56
It seems he even made an important discovery in electronics.
:14:00
And then in the month of May he killed himself.
:14:04
They say he could not stand hearing the word 'Spring.'
:14:44
He described me his reunion with Tokyo:
:14:48
like a cat who has come home from vacation in his basket
immediately starts to inspect familiar places.
:14:51
He ran off to see if everything was where it should be:
:14:55
the Ginza owl, the Shimbashi locomotive, the temple of the fox
at the top of the Mitsukoshi department store,