[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 … - Sakutarō Hagiwara

[Poetry] is the voice of a blue heron calling in the marshes of life, the sound of a wind darkly whispering over the reeds on a moonlit night.

Nothing contains a greater metaphysical mystery than the fact that a single thing presents two separate sides if you change the direction of your eyes, that a single phenomenon has a hidden "secret side." A long time ago, when I was a child, I would look at a framed painting hanging on the wall and become obsessed with the thought: What kind of world is secretly hidden behind that framed landscape? I often removed the oil painting to peer at its back. This question I had as a child remains for me, an adult today, as an unsolvable mystery.

When I think of poetry, I feel its fierce human suffering and its joy.