Kyoto-Dwelling: Poems. Edith M. Shiffert

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      REPRESENTATIVES

      British Isles & Continental Europe:

      Simon & Schuster International Group, London

      Australasia: Bookwise International

      1 Jeanes Street, Beverley, 5009, South Australia

      Some of the poems in this book were previously published in Kansai Time Out, Kyoto Review, Mainichi Daily News, and Poetry Nippon.

      Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.

      of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan

      with editorial offices at

      Osaki Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0032

      Copyright ©1987

      by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.

      All rights reserved

      Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 87-50162

      International Standard Book No. 978-1-4629-0403-7 (ebook)

      First printing, 1987

      Printed in Japan

      This collection of brief poems

      is dedicated to

      a happy old man of Kyoto

      MINORU SAWANO

      INTRODUCTION

      Perhaps these brief poems will make a story of a daily life at the foot of Mount Hiei in Kyoto. An American woman, her Japanese husband, and the landlord's dogs.

      Hiyo bird calls me—

       a black cat sneaking away!

       The dogs keep sleeping.

      Since I came to Kyoto in 1963, much has changed, but even more has not changed. They are the things written about here, at the moments when they were experienced.

      The most important word in the title of this book is not Kyoto but rather Dwelling." That means having residence at a place, a shelter where one stays for some time, the act of being and noticing from a particular place. Since all my Kyoto dwellings are written or in this presentation, I will list them.

      For the first month I had a room on Yoshida-yama, a hill overlooking much of the city and covered with temples, trees, and old graveyards.

      New to Kyoto, sounds

       of temple bells at evening

       are satisfying.

      Then I was able to rent several cold rooms at one end of one of the many subsidiary temples of Myoshinji at the northwest side of the city.

      Allowed to ring it,

       bell of thirteen hundred years,

       I strike—and listen.

      For the next three years I was in the northeast, near Midoro-ga-ike and Takara-ga-ike, ponds surrounded by steep hills densely vegetated and with numerous birds.

      In this small garden

       tall hydrangea hedges

       sheltering sparrows.

      My next home had the Kamo River on the west and Kamigamo Shrine on the east. It looked toward the north mountains, often snow covered and with winds sweeping down during typhoons and in winter.

      Now men are cutting

       an ancient tree at the shrine

       after last night's storm.

      For nine years I had a little Japanese-style house on the west bank of the Takano River which flows out of areas north and east of Kyoto and near my house joins the Kamo River.

      From the river bank

       this morning too, water birds

       and eastern ridges.

      For two years I lived in a new apartment house isolated in the middle of vegetable and rice fields. The latter, when flooded in summer, were beautifully loud all night with the innumerable frogs who dwelt in them. The whole area was beginning to be developed with apartments and shops after being vast farming fields without roads.

      Like a rice-pond rock,

       sleeping with thousands of frogs

       who won't keep quiet.

      Since 1981 I have had a bamboo grove close on the east side and forest on the north, their leaves almost brushing the windows. The bamboo grove has decreased a little, but because some imperial family members are in a small graveyard at its highest point, it should remain fairly undisturbed. Beyond is a forest ascending in ridges to the top of Mount Hiei, and hiking trails which can lead to there begin at our back gate. Though Mount Hiei is only 2,782 feet high, it seems much more, since it is conspicuous from any part of Kyoto and its steepness, many ridges, deep ravines, and heavy vegetation, with only a few access roads, make it seem quite remote. Deer and wild monkeys are found there, and foxes, boars, and badgers.

      At the top is the temple of Enryaku, which was founded in the eighth century and was one of the most important temples in the history of Buddhism as well as the history of the Kyoto area. Wandering on the slopes of these ridges that extend along the entire east side of Kyoto, one can know the physical land that existed before there was a Japanese race or language.

      Some of these poems mention persons who used to live here. The artist Tomioka Tessai about one hundred and fifty years ago resided just above my home in what used to be a temple. The Taoist hermit Hakuyu-shi lived in a nearby forest cave in the seventeenth century. Hakuin, the famed Zen reformer and reviver, meditated with him there in his youth and regarded him as a teacher.

      On this same pathway

       Hakuin and Hakuyu

       meeting each other?