Kitahara Hakushū (pen-name of Kitahara Ryūkichi, born 25 January, 1885; died 2 November, 1942), pictured above in a photograph from the 1930s
The Water Surface
At evening the falling flowers of the willow
Make a twilight, and through it
The water surface appears,
Reflecting the eyes of the daughter of the house.
While I felt myself caressed in your heart,
Your face singularly pale,
Suddenly one of the ripples changed its color
And showed the eyes of an imaginary ogre.
When I, frightened, stared at it,
It turned silvery like a tiny minnow,
Changed into a harmonica, into an oar,
And back into the eyes of the girl.
The willow flowers are falling on
A dragon-fly-hunter by the gutter of the eaves,
And my mind, tired, alone,
Is softly caressed at the surface of the water.
(translated from the Japanese; translator unknown; first published in Poetry in 1956)
