Reflections of a Man's Heart

- Even blue mold is

A map of dream,

Oh lunar park!

 

I waited in a map of dreams

and I found the town

was exactly as the map showed

a town covered with a thin seven colored membrane of oil

with a maze shaped like a big fluffy pliant cat

with transparent streets one on top of the other

on this side of the street along the beach

what does the unhurt dream once more melt into?

It melts into the map of the mesh  of the blood vessels

throughout the body.

into the town of the cat shaped maze

harbor, amphitheatre, park, restaurant,

then an eternal voyager who will never return

then an eternal surveyor who will come

then a hyena

 

(It was in those days that I had a job in a 

restaurant in a secluded alley at the base of

the cat's tail. A little ways away there was a

heart shaped park which the neighbors called

Cat's Balls Park but its polite name was Luna

Park I don't know why they called it that I

like the name Cat's Balls better. (Maybe

because there was such a marvelous view of

the moon from the park) Since he never came

back every day I broke a china beckoning-cat

into pieces throwing it on the floor of the

damp kitchen. (I agreed that they could

deduct the price of the cat from my pay) Each

time I did it the aged cook grinned and gave

me a donut. I picked up the pieces of cat and

ate the donut).

 

Over the faded park the sky drizzling rain lost the moon

from the spring showers to the monsoons

throw away the transparent sphere

it's only a childish ball game

nobody has ever survived

except as a fat ghost.

 

(So the old cook advised me out of his gentle wisdom)

 

In a white glass jar like an amphithreatre

my fingers scoop out cold cream

what is being torn off, my fingers or the cosmetics?

transparent grains conceal themselves in the essence of the cream

their small dull points make my blood spurt

and stream under the smooth hills of my fingers

a gush of magma of my scanty blood

my lips suck it up

dizziness for smallness

 

A mental compass constantly draws transparent circumferences

Sweeping up and down on the curved surface inside the sphere.

 

Its reality wears a sandal that is perhaps a full vision of the moon

The moon waning in the shape of a gentle inlet of  south sea island is his toenail

This is a land from which a sail hardly ever returns

 

Beware captain,

of the singing voices don't tie your body

to the goin insane masts

don't be enraptured by the beatific death

in the whirlpool of transparent fruit juice

or the tornado of sand that reveals death

at the end of its wandering voyage

don't look. Don't forget the restaurant here in this country.

 

(So the old cook filled with mild sadness advised again)

 

In a restaurant in a secluded alley at the base

of the tail, in the town of the cat shaped maze,

I waited for him to come back to me. In their

comfortable cage in the park the bears

wandered around in their trousers, and the

hyena having just arrived from the South ran

as hard as he could on the road of night and

bit me on the shoulder and I waited

drinking off the pale white milk. But he did not

come back. I waited in the town of the maze

shaped like the cat and the town became

more and more transparent, and the harbor

became a bay where a drop of the cat's tears

calmed itself.

 

- Kanai Mieko