Poetry is neither a mystery nor a symbol nor a demon. Poetry is nothing more than a lonely consolation for the owner of a sickly soul and a man of so… - Sakutarō Hagiwara

In a field where bats swarmed
I watched a pillar of crumbling flesh
it trembled lonely in the evening darkness
smelled raw like dead-man's-grass that flutters at a shadow
and was as ugly as rotting meat with throngs of maggots crawling on it.

Behold all sins have been inscribed,
yet not all are mine,
verily manifest to me are
only phantoms of blue flames without shadows,
only the ghosts of pathos that fade off over the snow,
ah painful confession on such a day what shall I make of them,
all are but phantoms of blue flames.

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.