Pathway to Japanese Literature

Sutegichi

There were no stars.

The wind had died.

The voices too had vanished.

The train that had departed from this station

Already beyond the mountains,

I let out a sigh.

On the white platform

me,

my shadow,

the stationmaster,

the stationmaster's shadow,

That was all there was.

The plateau stretching into the distance was

Though it was still early evening, profoundly—

Dark as if from time's primordial depths.

Within that darkness lay autumn grasses

sleeping with the scent of mint

Three thousand shaku altitude—

The lightness of the air pressure drained breath from my lungs. A slight dizziness. This platform was illuminated toward the dark plateau—a white stage. I descended from the stage.

I melt into the darkness.
Because there is no bridge,
I walk along the railroad tracks.

When I crossed to the left side, a path so faint it might not exist disappeared into the grass. "If you go that way," the Stationmaster called out, "it's straight into the mountains, you know." "No, it's fine," I replied. The Stationmaster peered at me with a suspicious expression.

He peered at me but was reassured by my smile.

The Stationmaster turned his back and clattered

He walked away toward the station building.

Stationmaster,

You have another quarter-century

You are being punished to play the role of Stationmaster.

I had already—
I did not know why I was walking here.

Ah...

Thirty-five years since my birth—
For the first time—
I performed an act without reason.
Ha ha ha!
I laughed—
The sound of laughter went unheard—
The surrounding grass rustled.
Unbeknownst to me,
a wind had risen.

When I turned around,

The eastern sky was slightly bright.

Already—
Had I walked an hour?
Had I walked three hours?
I didn't know.
It had become habit.
I looked at my left wrist, but
could see neither watch nor wrist—
darkness stared back.

That's right.
The wristwatch—the day before yesterday,
I sold it in Itabashi.

At Ikebukuro Station.

I met Nakamura.

That was when we ended up drinking together.

When Nakamura and I went to our usual haunt, our regular crowd was already drinking. As always - debates, sighs, and songs. Then together with Nakamura, we left that place. Mejiro. I stayed at his house.

Even though it was already one o'clock,

This time, with Mrs. Nakamura joining us, we drank shochu. Eventually the Nakamuras withdrew to the back room. I remained in the living room on this side of the sliding door and slept.

When I woke up,
It was ten o'clock this morning.
Nakamura

after he had left for work
I went along with the urging,
with Mrs.Nakamura

I was treated to breakfast

Before long, I left there.

On my late commute to work.

Where had that been?

Not yet fully withered.

Upon the street trees

The morning sun.
The morning sun darted into shadow.

The branch swayed faintly.

The moment I saw it,
in a flash I resolved—
I bought a train ticket.

“That you would… That you would do such a thing… I simply can’t believe it.”

At my house,

“Until now—why, you’ve stayed over four or five times at my house—you were always such a cheerful person. Especially from last night through this morning, you laughed so much! In the mornings after Nakamura left for work, while eating breakfast and blowing on your miso soup, you would make lewd remarks and tease me.”

“You do tease me so.”

"And 'Oh thank you for everything,' he said—then just up and left without a word! During their discussion that previous evening... My husband had suggested he leave that dreary company and take up work at his research institute instead—there was an opening in Statistics—but he just laughed and said any job would amount to same thing! Honestly now... Why ever did he do such a thing? I simply can't make sense of it at all."

The ground beneath my walking feet sloped gradually toward the right—naturally guiding my descent into the valley. Insects rustled through dwarf bamboo where the wind had died, while dew began forming across the plateau's expanse.

"That's right, Mrs.Nakamura," I thought. "You could never understand why I became this way. But tell me—do you even realize why you live as you do?"

the production of fertilizer

a Konzern that takes fertilizer production as its largest industrial sector

for keeping up social appearances

at the Labor Research Institute

While making graphs

At home, diligently—

In seminars with colleagues

is researching "The Formation of Eastern Society"

Nakamura's

the wife who believes in his success as a sociologist

Nakamura who makes her believe that

They’re such a heartwarming couple.

When I held out my right hand,

Faintly white glowing through the valley bottom.

A night stream was flowing.

My body lurched and tilted

Sliding down, down, down through the dwarf bamboo,
I collapsed at the riverbank beneath the slope.
The damp soil's
violent odor stabbed at my nostrils.

Because my cheek itched, when I put my hand to it there was a slimy smear of blood - when I fell.

Had I cut it on a tree stump?

While touching my cheek,

That's right—since leaving Tokyo,

that I had touched my own body

This was the first time—I realized.

The moment I thought this,

Like an electric current,

I remembered the women.

A soldier who dies by gunfire on the battlefield—
In an instant—
Every major and minor event of his entire life—
Every last detail of those stands out in sharp relief.

They say you see your whole life flash before your eyes—

That story's true.

The women.

They came all at once, five or six of them.

Hatsuko

Matsue

Kumiko

Okei

…………

All of you

You were already far from me.

There—abruptly toward the dark sky—

The moment I tried to look up,
A surge of vomit
Gag gag gag gag
When I came to
At a rock on the stream's edge
I lay there upside down.

Something went wrong and I

Thrusting my face directly into the stream water,
after gargling with ice-cold water,
I drank as much water as I could

I stood up

My feet reached the left bank of the stream.

At that moment, in the distance,
A faint Gyaa-like cry resembling a bird’s—

There was a resonance.

A bird crying at this hour?

I didn't find that particularly strange.
The inside of the bird's mouth that had cried
in the darkness appeared bright red.

At the same time, I remembered my wife Setsuko.
The red bird's mouth and Setsuko merged in my mind.
What connection could there be?
All the women I'd been involved with until now—
I recalled them one after another.
I had already spent ten years living with her.
My wife—
I remembered her last of all.
Moreover, everything I recalled—
Had faded to a dingy white, stripped of all flavor and scent.
Was it because I'd known every inch so thoroughly?
Or perhaps because of that—
Or was it precisely because I'd loved her most deeply?
The bear bamboo grass had vanished from the riverbank,
The thicket of bushes

The thicket crackled with noise.

The next thing I remembered was

Hatakeyama

Kunimoto

Oda

All three had been friends.

Hatakeyama—you still wore that bitter face,

I made a face declaring I wasn't soft,

Thus making an unbearably sweet face.

"What's Onoda supposed to be?"

I sneered.

Your sneer

contained genuine hatred.

The jealousy driving your envy of Onoda was genuine. Though he was the same age as you, he'd already become a star novelist while you remained unpublished. Onoda would treat you as a peer only to disparage you under the guise of respect, while you—for your part—addressed him without honorifics yet still sucked up to him. Like vipers coiled in darkness, you hated each other. Observing how intensely jealous you were of that popular novelist Onoda, I'd wondered what sort of man could provoke such venom.

I had felt some interest. When he was introduced by you, when I met him—he wasn't human but a pig. Both body and mind utterly sapped, at every little thing he'd let out a shriek, with too much mucus throughout his body, licking his own mucus and getting intoxicated, gauntly shambling along... Pig... Next—the victim of life. Old man Kunimoto. This person's—how he does pour it out!

This dissatisfaction and complaints and lack toward life he had been pouring out since birth—though only thirty-six, making his forty-eight-year-old face sag—from cursing capitalism at the trading company where he worked because he longed for communism... Just when you'd think he'd join the Party, he went weeping to the Imperial Palace at New Year's greetings, declaring Japan a fine country. When he raised a celebratory toast,

With about two gō of alcohol, he would get dead drunk,

And so starting from the very next day,
in the commuter train,

he curses that Japan is hell
He alone is
always a miserable person,
That misery of his,
sucking on it like hard candy
the fact that he himself is happy
he remains blissfully unaware of his own happiness
If Kunimoto is the victim,
Oda might be called a perpetrator
Completely meaninglessly proactive with
his own scatterbrained recklessness
he calls it Americanism
Lately rebranding that
as Sputnikism
associates with young university scientists
socializes with boxers

At the newspaper company where he worked,
to science articles and murder cases,
he always rushed out.
"Sex is everything," he declared,
it was his catchphrase.
Yet his wife had taken a third lover.
No matter how many more people I tried to list,

It's all the same.
At the end of it all comes dejection.
This human form called me exists.
Loathsome.
Everyone—everyone—loathsome.

If this were hatred,

I might have lived.

But lacking even the vigor to hate,

Just meaninglessly loathsome.

I was on the train.

Trying to compose something like a suicide note,

No matter how much I licked the pencil over my notebook,

I couldn't write a single line.

Whatever I wrote turned to lies.

I'm not dying for the sort of things you write in a suicide note.
All the suicide notes left behind by those who kill themselves
Those are lies.

No no—a single person simply vanishes.

In every possible sense
I mustn't cause trouble for others
Telling myself this
I tried to keep writing but ultimately failed

No matter what I say it's futile.
No matter what I write is loathsome.
People and people are all each other's fellow madmen.

No matter what I say they won't understand.

No more.

No more.

No more.

Repeating it like a song,

Before I knew it,

I stepped into the stream's water,

Splashing heavily.

I crossed to the far shore,

Parting the bushes,

Climbed up the cliff.

The small branches of bushes in the darkness

Scratched my face and hands

As I climbed up and stood on solid ground,

The plateau's air suddenly chilled completely,
I felt as if I had swallowed ice down to the pit of my stomach.
Inside the water-soaked pants

The skin on my legs stung sharply.
What I had crossed over was

The River Yomi?

I once saw something like this in a three-life divination book I'd peeked into long ago.

Or was that from Dante's Divine Comedy?

Either way, it didn't matter.

Dead people

I was trudging across alone.
A dark river.
With the cold wind,

I walked.

For people facing death,

Can there truly be such void moments?

Like a blank sheet

Nothing is written

No stains at all.

No joy or sorrow.

Over it,
only my legs moved.
Just one thing—
somewhere in my chest,
I felt a slight fear.

That
The anxiety that I might botch it.
If I fail,
everything would end up becoming a comedy that isn't even funny,

People would not forgive me.

No matter what happens,
I must not fail.

Thinking this,

I grasped the medicine bottle in my pocket.

The coldness of the medicine bottle's glass

The coldness adhered to my palm.

…………

It's time.

I stopped in the grass.
Nearby stood two or three clumps of trees.
I peered through.
It appeared to continue into dark sparse woods.
Heaven and earth were suffused.
Night dew was falling.
I sat down in the grass.
The medicine bottle—
I took out the whiskey bottle.

I placed them on my lap.
The whiskey in the bottle
let out a faint trickling sound.
I would wash down this medicine with whiskey,
if I stayed still for a while,
it would all be over.

However,

Why does it have to be so complicated?

The black sky

Why doesn't it come swiftly collapsing down
Like crushing an ant,
Why won't it crush me?
It's because I'm not an ant.
Then what is this me?
Here I go again
Now of all times...
I spread out the family register.
I lined up identification documents.
Even if I tried to verify myself,
What would it accomplish?
Beside me lay
Dead branches.

I would lie down with them.

That's how it was.

The reason I must die—
I had none.
Therefore I would die.
God
You too,
Come down here
Lie down in this dew.

You and I are colleagues.

After letting out a long, long sigh,
I lay down on my back.
It was comfortable lying there.
The word "Nirvana"
A thought flitted through my mind, but
Just because of that,
I—

I opened the medicine bottle, but

Suddenly, I felt terribly sleepy,

I stopped moving and stayed perfectly still.

………………

………………

At first, I

I thought my own ears were ringing.
Next, I thought earthworms were chirping.
At the end of my existence as a human being,
Earthworms were singing a funeral dirge.

…………

The sound of those earthworms

suddenly leapt up

and resounded so loudly

that I realized it was a flute.

Moreover, it was extremely close.

I had unconsciously raised myself up.
I peered into the woods.
The sound of the flute came flowing from over there.
I stood up and
walked twenty or thirty steps,
in the grassland at the edge of the woods,
five shaku in height and about one tsubo in area,

A grass-roofed thatched hut stood there,
Under that wind-swept roof,
A hunched shadowy figure sat playing a bamboo flute
sounding
The pitch had only about three tones.
Yet,
a sound like a beast sobbing
he sent it piercing farther and farther away
Only the one who was playing
was listening intently to it
Abruptly, the flute stopped.

From inside the hut

“Who’s there?”

………………

“Who’s ’at?”

It was a country boy's voice.

Apparently still before his voice had changed,

it was a girlish voice.

I was startled

I couldn't respond.

The boy didn't seem particularly concerned.

He brought the flute to his lips again and

began to play.

I huddled into the thatched hut.

I sat down next to the boy.
The boy blew with all his breath and then
placed the flute beside him.
After remaining silent for a while,
“Cold, huh...”
“Who are you?”

“Huh?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me?”
“I’m just playin’ the flute.”

“How did you come by that flute?”

“It’s my flute. I made it m’self.”

“...And you are?”

“I’m Sutegichi.”
“Sutegichi…”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I—”

I couldn’t answer.

I peered through the darkness at the boy.

“Ain’tcha from Tokyo?”

“’Cause Tokyo folks sometimes stay at my place,”

“I can’t figure you Tokyo folks out.”

“That’s right—Tokyo.”

“Are you a kid from around here?”

“I’m Hira from Goshiyo.”

“At Goshiyo’s Erano Shinoya.”

“The bath boiler tender at Shinoya.”

“So your name is Sutegichi?”
“That’s right.”
The boy took up his flute again and put it to his lips.
This time the pitch was somewhat lower.

I listened vacantly.
Living in this world—
what I'm doing here—

I just can't comprehend it.

Before I knew it, the flute had stopped,
The boy rustled around for a moment and then

He slung a heavy load onto his back.

He stood up smoothly and left the hut.

“Where are you going?”

“But you’re comin’ too, ain’tcha?”

He began rustling through the grass.

Unconsciously, I too stood up,

I began walking after him.

The boy had a backpack frame—

objects resembling pine logs

he was carrying as many as twenty on his back.

The rope creaked with a groaning sound.

However, he moved his feet with ease.

He was thin,

his height seemed greater than mine.

“Are you going back to that Shinoya place?”

“Yeah.”

“Does Shinoya refer to an inn?”

“Yeah, it’s an inn.

“I’m a pot boiler.”

“But you—what were you doing in that hut in the middle of the night?”

“In this dead of night,”

“In that hut...”

“What were you doing there?”

“Yesterday I came into these depths carrying logs. If I’d dawdled and night fell, I couldn’t walk anymore, so I stayed up there.”

“I came into these depths carrying logs.”

“If I’d dawdled,”

“Night fell.”

“Because I couldn’t walk anymore,”

“I was spendin’ the night there.”

“Is it far to Shinoya?”

“Is it that far?”

“Naw, ’bout a mile maybe?”

“Huh, that’s close?”

“Without going back even a mile,

“You stay in a hut like that and then go back?”

“Huh, I’m tellin’ ya, it’s all year round.”

“So why are you going back now?”

“’Cause you’re catchin’ the train, ain’tcha, Mister?”

Apparently this boy intended to guide me to the railway station—this I came to understand.

"Sleeping alone in such a place—aren't you scared?"

"What's this 'scared' you're talkin' 'bout?"

"Aren't there any wild beasts around here?"

"Aren't there any?"

"There's three badgers, and there's foxes. And there's deer."

"How old are you?"

"Me? You askin' 'bout me? 'Bout sixteen," he said. "Don't really know."

"Don't you even know your own age?"

"Me? I'm just some abandoned brat—don't know my age."

“Ain’t got no idea ’bout my years.”

“An abandoned child?”

“I see.”

“Hiratarō picked me up, see,

There weren’t no place to take me,

When he took me to Shinoya Inn,

The old lady at Shinoya Inn, see,

If it’d been a horse foal, you could’ve sold it off easy, ’cause that’d be fine, but…

Had to go and pick up some human kid like that,

’Cause they eat up your food, ain’t no good.

She went on a real rampage,

Gave me the name Sutegichi.

“Ha ha ha ha…………”

In a voice like a girl’s,

he laughed lightly.

“Mr．Hiratarō

went to Managashi’s horse market to buy a foal,

In Managashi, he drank some booze, see,

When he gets drunk, he gets all cocky

He gambled away the foal money, see,

Ended up losin’ all his cash, seems like.

And then on the way back,

When he came to the outskirts of Managashi town”

“Beside horse dung,
I’d been dumped there, see,”

“If he'd left me there,”
“I would've been trampled by horses.”
“He had no choice but to pick me up and take me back.”

As they walked briskly,
he uttered a single phrase offhandedly,
then after walking another stretch,
he’d drop a remark
“Don’t you go to school?”
“Ain’t goin’ to no school,
the old lady at Shinoya’s a cheapskate, see,
don’t give us nothin’ but scraps to eat,
when guests stay and there’s leftovers,
she gives us fish ’n’ meat ’n’ such.”

“What kind of people stay there?”

“Like stonemasons from the dam up ahead,”
“People from the forestry cabin also sometimes stay,”
“Mister, where’ya headed?”

“Where to—?”

Right—where am I going?

“Lost your way, ain’t ya?”

“This inner area stretches on for ten ri or even twenty ri—
Nothin’ but mountains.
Eventually you’d come out in Echigo.”

The boy tossed out his words,
When he slightly slackened his pace,

He began to play his flute.

Guided by the sound of that flute,
Staggering along,
I gradually grew faint.
Before I knew it,

We came out to a place that somewhat resembled a path.
From somewhere,
the scent of larch trees drifted.

The flute, like the cry of beasts,
circled through the woods,
rippled like waves,
and vanished beyond the plateau.

It disappeared beyond the plateau.
That’s right.

This Sutegichi and I,

Through darkness forgotten by people

That we’re walking like this through

Every single human in this world

No one knew.

We were figures written in the margins of life's ledger.

No—God too—

He probably hadn't noticed us two either.

Outcasts.

Outcasts—Sutegichi and I walked.

With a heavy thud,

the flute's sound suddenly ceased.

Sutegichi giggled quietly.

Peering through the darkness,

he was rubbing his face.

He stood by the roadside.

Against the trunk of a bamboo birch

Sutegichi collided head-on

He struck his forehead.

“What happened? Didn’t you get hurt?”

“Nah—” He chuckled again, “This makes twice I’ve bumped into this guy. Heh heh heh.”

“I can’t see nothin’, y’know? Let my guard down an’ I go bumpin’ into things.”

“Huh? You can’t see? You can’t see? Are you blind?”

“Ain’t blind! It’s night blindness. When night comes... heh, I can’t see nothin’ at all,”

But when morning came and the sun rose,

"I can see everythin' clear as day."

“So then... You can’t see anything at all right now?”

“That’s why… heh. Went an’ bumped right into it… Heh heh.”

“So then,

Since early moonrise,

“You can’t see my figure either, huh?”

“Can’t see nothin’.”

“Have you been like that since you were little?”

“Yeah… bad nutrition, they say.”

“So you were waiting in that hut

until your eyes could see again

“So you were waiting in that hut until your eyes could see again, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You can’t see anything, yet you walk so well.”

“’Cause I’m used to it.”

No problem.

Ugh... I'm starving.

“Take it easy for a bit.”

“I see…………”

“…………………………”

He seemed to say something.

But I didn't remember.

I jolted as if slapped across the face.

Guided by the blind boy,

I was walking.

Suddenly, the weight of my body vanished,

Thud, I fell onto the road.

A strange thing happened.

The surrounding darkness and I became one substance.

My eyes and nose felt strangely cool...

“What’s wrong?
“Didja fall?”

The boy turned around.
He was waiting.
He didn't reach out a hand to help me up.
That kind of warmth—
This boy had none of it.

Eventually I got up.
Who had gotten up—
Was it myself or the boy?
Or someone else entirely?
I couldn't tell.

The boy, as if nothing had happened,
strode off briskly while
starting to play the flute again.

What had happened? The self that was walking—despite knowing myself—the human called I had shattered into fragments and vanished. I knew this. Only the sound of the boy's flute rose and fell haphazardly through three notes; only that quivering sound truly passed through.

The path seemed to have widened. Both sides became larch woods. Was dawn gradually drawing near? The road was hazily white.

"Mister," Sutegichi stopped playing the flute and casually addressed me, "won't you stay at Shinoya?"

Startled by that voice, I couldn't respond for a moment.

"You don't know your father or mother? Don't you know?"

“Ain’t got a clue.”

Though no laughter accompanied it,

the boy in the darkness

I could tell had smiled.

“I’m just like Hebunbun.”
“The old woman from Shinoya said.”

“What’s ‘Hebunbun’?”

“Mister, don’t you know Hebunbun?”

"When summer comes," he said, "around our place and the horse stables, they buzz around like that. Those things." They were flies. The boy wasn't laughing - dead serious now. "Those flies now, they hatch from horse dung and such. Me? I must've hatched from horse dung too." He said they hatch. From horse dung. Like maggots wriggling out. A human had hatched. "Living like that," I pressed, "who cares for you most? Does anyone?" "Ain't nobody cares a lick about me," he shot back.

“Even if someone cared for trash like me,
there’s nothin’ in it for ’em.
There’s this woman Oyone-san
who sometimes gives me fish scraps,
but Oyone-san—”

“She gives fish bones to dogs too, y’know.”

“So do you ever feel like seeing your father or mother...”

“Don’t you ever feel like seeing them?”

“Keh! Keh! Keh!”

he laughed like a monkey

“Once, y’see...
“I figured I oughta find ’em...

“When I stood by the station,”
“men an’ women—”
“a whole passel o’ folks came through,”
“Among ’em—”
“maybe Pa an’ Ma...”
I kept thinking they might be there—
then thinking they weren’t—

Thinking it was all the same,
I stopped searching.

When I suddenly noticed,
my cheeks were cold.
Tears were flowing before I knew it.
I reached into my pocket,
took out the whiskey bottle,
and gulped down the contents in one go.
Something like fire
passed through my throat.
I gripped that bottle.

Into the dark Karamatsu pine forest.
I hurled it with a whoosh.

The bottle struck the trunk of a Karamatsu pine in the distance.
It shattered with a sharp crack and scattered.

“What’s that noise just now?”
“D’you chuck somethin’?”

“It’s nothing.”

As I said this, the fingers of my left hand inside the pocket were fumbling with the medicine bottle.

My fingers fumbled with the medicine bottle.
Suddenly I felt strange.
I let out a voice.
I began laughing quietly.

An absurdity from the depths of my gut was surging up.

It surged up.

When I came to my senses,

from within me

the urge to die

had completely vanished.

And for the rest of my life—that urge,

I don't suppose will ever arise in me again.

I don't know why,

but that became clear to me.

“Mister,”
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s not funny.”
“Then why you laughin’?”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re lying.”

“Look, you are laughin’!”

No matter how I tried to suppress it,
My laughter wouldn't stop.
As if dead drunk,
My two legs walked on,
Tangling and teetering against each other.
“Flies got drunk on horse shit!”
“Flies got drunk on horse shit!”
They staggered noisily.
At my footsteps,
Sutegichi, who had been straining his ears,

Eventually, he began giggling quietly. "Ahahaha!" After looking up at the night sky and letting out a loud laugh, again both of them started walking.

The sound of Sutegichi's flute had begun playing.
It shifted suddenly.
The path abruptly exited the woods.
It emerged onto the cliff at the edge of the plateau.

The sky was growing faintly bright.

While only his legs danced along,

from behind Sutegichi, who walked playing his flute,

the path emerged onto the cliff road.

Two flies,

keeping time with the flute's sound,

rubbing their hands,

appeared rubbing their legs.

The cold air before dawn

spread into the deep valley,

while the distant mountain range above

was already growing faintly bright.

Looking down,

the valley was still dark.

“Here we are.”

Sutegichi stopped.

“From here, the downhill slope... Once you keep descending, below here's Goshiyodeera Village. Passing through there, keep heading down that way and you’ll reach the station.”
“Can your eyes see now?”
“Still can’t see. This here downhill slope's dangerous, see... Whenever I come this far, I plop down on the moss-covered ground and sit, waitin’ for daybreak.”
Sutegichi sat down on a roadside stone.

Looking down,
In the village at the valley floor,
Two, three, seven,
Lights were twinkling.
In the far left
The five or six clustered ones were
That must be the railway station.
“Mister,
Right below this cliff here, you know—

At the upper edge of the cliff,

There's a light on, I reckon.

“Look here! That’s Shinoya. The night’s already worn on. ‘You think they’re up yet?’” With sightless eyes,

Following the peering gaze,
Looking to the right,
In the darkness, dimly, faintly,
The shabby inn's kitchen entrance was open,
What was blazing fiercely
Was that the hearth fire?

Humans had already risen.
They had begun living.

To live or

To die—

Before I knew it, they were keeping the fire going. Sitting side by side with Sutegichi while gazing at that dark valley bottom, tears streamed down endlessly on cheeks that didn't even want to cry. I would never again—would likely never attempt to live. As though not trying to die—Ridiculous! When I peered into Sutegichi's eyes, they remained wide open, those unseeing eyes clear and—but reflecting the northern sky's pale whiteness as the depths below had begun to brighten. Sutegichi's flute trailed off,

We crossed through valleys.
From those depths,
in time,
voices of people so very distant—
their echoes ascended.
(March 1958)