selections from Does Grass Sweat: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet
BY JEE LEONG KOH (2016) WITH COMMENTARY BY SAM FUJIMOTO- MAYER (2066)
The first crocus
flashes its green card
at airport security
The haiku flaunts its audacity. It does not obey the traditional stricture against figurative language, but breaks it instead, by flashing a wildly inventive metaphor. It crosses the borders policed by generic ideas. It is here to stay.
Hehe
drunk on shots
of forsythia
Brimming with color in their deep-lobed petals, the forsythia shrubs along the reservoir path in Central Park were early heralds of spring. These sturdy, woody plants flowered generously. Walking along the elevated dirt path, one could see the vehicular through-road running parallel but lower. The road was hemmed in on both sides by stone walls, but over the walls, forsythia poured its intoxicating nectar.
Going incognito
the forsythia drops
its medals
Native to East Asia, the forsythia was first entered into Western records by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg. He categorized it wrongly as a lilac. The story of how Thunberg managed to enter Japan, closed to foreigners in 1775, is interesting. He was commissioned to visit the Dutch colonies and Japan to collect specimens for the Dutch botanical gardens. Stopping in Cape Town, Cape Colony, he stayed there for three years to learn Dutch in order to pass as a Dutchman, because Japan was only open to Dutch merchants at the time, and even then they were confined to the small artificial island of Dejima, in the Bay of Nagasaki.
Dejima was a small fan-shaped island formed by digging a canal through the peninsula. Its name means “Exit Island.” Thunberg was finally allowed to leave the island in mid-1776, when he accompanied the director of the Dutch settlement to pay respects to the shogun in Edo. One can imagine his intense excitement as he gathered never-before-seen specimens on the slow journey, and envisioned writing the book that would bring him fame. He published the book Flora japonica in 1784. It was rife with errors. Many plants happily labeled as “japonica” came originally from China. So eager to proclaim discovery, he had mistaken location for locus classicus.
The forsythia Thunberg described as a lilac was recognized later not to be a lilac. It was awarded its own genus and named after Scotsman William Forsyth, the Director of the Royal Garden at Kensington at the time of the correction. The plant now bears his name as a military uniform wears a medal.
Between heaven and earth
the gods travel at their will
via a piece of twig
In Zen Spaces and Neon Places, Vinayak Bharne writes, “In ancient Shinto tradition, the tree was a yorishiro, the means by which Gods descended to the earth.”
If the tree is a heavenly elevator, the broken twig is a fakir’s rope-trick the Gods delight in.
Jee Leong Koh’s latest book of poems Steep Tea (Carcanet) is a Financial Times Best Book of 2015. Jee is the author of three other books of poems and a book of zuihitsu. His work has been shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize and translated into Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, and Latvian. Originally from Singapore, he now lives in New York City, where he edits the arts blog Singapore Poetry and runs the Singapore Literature Festival in NYC.