A Guerrilla's Fantasy

For days now I have been walking

carrying a rifle on my back.

The road wanders

from one strange town to another,

but over there, somewhere, is a familiar village.

I am returning there.

I must go back.

If I close my eyes I can remember instantly

the shape of the woods,

the short cut through the fields,

the decorations on the roofs,

the method for making pickles,

the family clans,

the farmers whittling away each other's small fields,

the sorry social conventions, and the unchanging white

walls;

the broken hoes without handles, the land owned by others,

forefathers who died like beggars,

mothers who had been run out of town.

I return there,

taking the short cut I knew.

With my rifle ready, I jump out of a corner.

It is time to work off some primordial grudge,

to revenge myself.

The village is there somewhere.

The road continues from one strange town to another.

On I keep walking, but the landscape

seems unfamiliar, like something in a dream.

Nobody passes me by.

I meet with no one.

I go to a house to ask for directions,

but it is the house of a deaf person

with only walls and without doors or windows.

I try another house

but this one, too, has neither doors nor windows.

There is not a soul anywhere I can speak to.

The road is about to disappear into the village

which is shining brightly in unearthly colors.

"Where am 1?"

"Where does this road lead-to?"

"Tell me!"

"Answer me!"

I command the soundless village,

taking my rifle off my shoulder,

but the weapon is almost weightless.

Something is very wrong.

In my hand I am holding a stick about three feet long.

Translated, from the Japanese, by

Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Leuders