Horses are standing in rain.

A herd of horses with one or two foals is sanding in rain.

In hushed silence rain is falling.

The horses are eating grass.

With tails, and backs too, and manes too, completely soaking wet they are eating grass, eating grass.

Some of them are standing with necks bowed over absentmindedly and not eating grass.

Rain is falling and falling in hushed silence.

The mountain is sending up smoke.

The peak of Nakadake is sending up dimly yellowish and heavily oppressive volcanic smoke, densely, densely.

And rain clouds too all over the sky.

Still they continue eating without ending.

Horses are eating grass.

On one of the hills of the Thousand-Mile-Shore-of-Grass they are absorbedly eating blue-green grass.

Eating.

They are all standing there quietly.

They are quietly gathered in one place forever, dripping and soaked with rain.

If a hundred years go by in this single moment, there would be no wonder.

Rain is falling. Rain is falling.

In shushed silence rain is falling.

By Tatshuji Miyoshi: translated from the Fapanese by Edith Marcombe Shiffert and Uki Sawa

I found this poem mesmerizing. The image of hoses standing in the falling rain and the constant repetition of “chewing grass” created a measured rhythm that was almost trance-like. It was a poem written and read in meditation in which the viewer was reporting a state of awareness of the moment. Everything seemed in slow motion like a dream or a hallucination in which time slipped into timelessness. The slow eating of the horses, the ceaseless rain, the smoke slowly rising from the volcano all presented to me a picture painted the style of ancient Asian brush and ink – the brush, the paper, the water and the ink all swirling and interacting in big clouds of potential.

This poem also struck a chord in me because I am living in California and for the last two weeks we are living in an atmosphere of burning forests like the volcano of the poem. Our rain is not wet but comprised of grey ashes and yellow air. Are we now wearing our face masks to prevent the spread of an epidemic or as a protection against a dry and angry environment? Mankind has much to answer for as caretakers of this earth.

Tatsuji Miyoshi: was a Japanese poet, critic and editor. His work often portrays lonliness and isolation of contemporary life but is written in a complex, highly literary style reminiscent of classical Japanese poetry.