for my green friend

1803

.洪水は去年のけふ也小夜砧
kôzui wa kozo no kyô nari sayo-ginuta

the flood was exactly
a year ago...
pounding cloth at night

issa

1804

.夕月や流残りのきりぎりす
yûzuki ya nagare nokori no kirigirisu

evening moon--
surviving the flood
a katydid

issa

•

floods are not new to the japanese,
but the possibilities for destruction
we're seeing today have been unimaginable.

my friend midori, i learn,
is but 60 kilometers, 37 miles,
from fukushima.

she says, "First, I thought that my house suffered big damage.
However, the people of the seaside
that suffered damage for the tsunami
were more tragedy."

(below is a tiny bit of what you see.
at the link she sent me with that comment.
color codes reflect tsunami incursion
as fully explained in the article.)

"Seven relatives took refuge in my house
from the neighborhood of the shore
and stayed for a few days.
Then, the water service did not function.
We lined up and got water every day.
The aftershock still continues each place of japan.
It's strange, but the epicenter does not seem to be one place.

"And fear of the radioactivity continues."

things fall apart

THE SECOND COMING


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those
words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands
of the desert
A shape with lion body and the
head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all
about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats