About Forms
On June 14 (1972), JAL's DC-8 carrying 86 passengers crashed in Jaitpur, a village 27 kilometers southeast of New Delhi. Bodies and broken parts of the aircraft were scattered widely in the farmland on the bank of the Jumna River, which flows at the edge of the village. Grotesquely contorted bodies, seats still with humans tied to them, a white girl holding a doll, flames. Ambulances rushed to the scene through dust on the riverbed which was so dry that the sand buried the cars up to the hubcaps. . . . Family members of the passengers left for the crash site on JAL's special plane at 10 a.m., on the 15th, which is expected to arrive in New Delhi at midnight. ( Excerpted from a newspaper report )
Translator's addition : The aircraft made a landing error in a sandstorm. Among the passengers was Takarabe's brother Tetsurô, who was on his way to Teheran to take up a business post. He was 36 years old.
A corner of an old park by the hotel had a yogi.
A sandstorm had made the lotuses in the mud bloom;
his bones and skin
coiled around his lukewarm innards and rigid meditation.
He wouldn't touch salt
and seemed to wait single-mindedly for the colors to turn limpid.
A human body should go on drying up like that, I thought.
Facing a jamun tree,
it should go on drying up,
without reading written words,
without picking up meanings,
simply hoping not to return to being human.
But it's different in Maulana Azat.
Even a yogi's shadow acquires a raw smell.
Bouquets of pure lotus flowers,
ominous bats,
unfortunate flesh (though there is no such thing),
words become stereotypical,
things are swiftly carried from form to protyle.
But the philosophy
that protyle is plastic
earns me neither bread nor flower petals.
Maulana Azat abounds with unfortunate deaths.
An ominous stench strikes me down.
The voice Don't touch forces me back to being human; I walk without falling
and read the wooden plaques on the coffins.
Male? In charred state
Female: with false teeth, charred
Small man: only half?
Male about 30 years old with fragment of striped shirt
Male: with remnant of dark hair; upper implant
Female: blonde, ring with JCS
Male: fat body, with capped teeth
White female: golden necklace
Male: about 180 centimeters tall, no head
Male: 175 centimeters, Hitsujiya jacket
Male? Extremely charred.
They certainly seem to convey forms.
What form,
I find myself thinking.
I try to touch you with white gloves,
try to pull up the body that ought to be there, and I can't touch you.
Souls aren't written on wooden plaques, they say,
by color, weight, age, male, Oriental. . . .
The question of soul. . . .
Abruptly there's a voice near my brow:
“Do you believe in something formless?” it says.
“No, never.
It would be odd for a soul not to have a form.”
Trees and cows that pass before my eyes wear nimbuses.
Soul and form, violently collapsed,
are seeping into the red sand.
I was sad and wouldn't accept anything,
but I could have been sad and accepted everything.
Red mud smeared on his body,
a yogi stands on his head and his form grows transparent.
Letting a mantra rise like steam,
trying single-mindedly to rot
in total red.
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