I have made poetry for a long time but I have less and less confidence in it. Someone like me is no more than a miserable blue cat's nightmare. - Sakutarō Hagiwara

Nature anywhere oppresses me,
and human kindnesses make me gloomy,
rather I prefer walking in a bustling city park until I get tired,
and find a bench under some lonely tree,
I prefer to be looking at the sky absentmindedly,
ah, I prefer to be looking at the smoke and soot flowing away far and sad over the city sky,
or at a swallow flying away over the roofs of buildings, into the distance, small.

The Hirose River flows white.
Time passes and all illusions must fade away.
Wanting to catch my life,
one day in the past I cast my line in the river,
but ah that happiness was too far away
and I didn't see tiny fish even in a flash.

[T]o me poetry is neither a mystery nor a religion. Even less is it "a life-or-death work" or "a sacred way of ascetic training." It is nothing more than "a sad consolation" for me.