Two Excerpts from The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan by Ezra Pound and
Ernest Fenollosa
i
A moon hangs clear on the pine-bough. The wind rustles as if
flurried with rain. It is an hour of magic. The bass strings are
something like rain; the small strings talk like a whisper. The deep
string is a wind voice of autumn; the third and the fourth strings are
like the crying stork in her cage, when she thinks of her young birds
toward nightfall. Let the cocks leave off their crowing. Let no one
announce the dawn.
A flute's voice has moved the clouds of Sushinrei. And the
phoenix came out from the cloud; they descend with their playing.
Pitiful, marvelous music! I have come down to the world. I have
resumed my old playing. And I was happy here. All that is soon over.
-- from Tsunemasa
ii
Sorrow! --
Sorrow is in the twigs of the duck's nest
And in the pillow of the fishes,
At being held apart in the waves,
Sorrow between mandarin ducks,
Who have been in love
Since time out of mind.
Sorrow --
There is more sorrow between the united
Though they move in the one same world.
O low 'Remembering-grass',
I do not forget to weep
At the sound of the rain upon you,
My tears are a rain in the silence,
O heart of the seldom clearing. ...
The stag's voice has bent her heart toward sorrow,
Sending the evening winds which she does not see,
We cannot see the tip of the branch.
The last leaf falls without witness.
There is an awe in the shadow,
And even the moon is quiet,
With the love-grass under the eaves. ...
Ah false desire and fate!
Her tears are shed on the silk-board,
Tears fall and turn into flame,
The smoke has stifled her cries,
She cannot reach us at all,
Nor yet the beating of the silk-board
Nor even the voice of the pines,
But only the voice of that sorrowful punishment. ...
-- from Kinuta (The Silk-Board)
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Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis
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