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KJ
Selections
SOMEWHERE
ON THE WATER PLANET
by
NANAO SAKAKI, from KJ#22
- In the beginning
- There was
a forest, a beech forest.
- The forest
gathered rain & divided rivers.
- Rivers that
nourished all breathing creatures.
Through
long summer days
We, honorable descendants
Of Yamanba, mountain witch &
Kappa, river goblin
Walk down-river to the ocean.
On
the path, scorching sun-beams
& sometimes torrential downpours
In the bush,
gnats, mosquitoes, ticks, newts & vipers.
At day's
end, the darker the night, the brighter the moon & stars.
Our first meeting - Megalobatrachus japonicus
A giant salamander, who knows nothing
Of the extinction of dinosaurs or the end of the atomic age,
At ease
in a pool by himself.
Next, a piece of Neolithic jar,
Shattered by a summer thunderbolt,
Buried deep in river-bank for five thousand years,
Waiting
for some-one to pick it up.
- In the blue
sky, something dazzling drifting -
- White porcelain,
or fair weather cumulus?
Far away... typhoon;
Sound of a swallow skimming over a big dragon-fly
Resting on
a trembling reed.
- Ripples &
children - the sun's dew drops -
- Play in the
same flow.
Diving, swimming, rip-roaring together.
Cooking
brown rice with driftwood on dry river-bed
- Dear sweet smell of campfire in years long-gone!
Dear living memories of forest life in Neolithic times.
Under a roaring tsunami of golf balls
Many time-honored
beech forests are drowning today.
This is a flow -
Binding forest to ocean or yesterday to tomorrow.
Look - fisherman's arms, fishing-pole, fishing-line, fishing-hook!
There at the end of the line, brilliant silver light reflecting.
Is
that a sweet-fish, or a bubble of toxic waste-water?
- One day from
the ocean, from yesterday, I'm sure
- A lost hump-back
whale will swim up this river.
- And someday,
from the ocean, from tomorrow,
- Countless
whales will swim up the river
- To revisit
the ancient beech forest,
Whales
swimming up-river, up-river.
August 1992, Nagara River
The
Nagara River, in Gifu Prefecture (near Nagoya), is the last river
on the main island of Japan whose flow is not obstructed by a dam.
However, construction of a long-planned estuary tidal barrier dam
is now under way, despite grave lack of evidence to support either
its necessity, or ecological soundness. The dam will in fact metamorphose
river habitat with disastrous impact on a number of species, including
some unique to the Nagara, such as the satsukimasu salmon.
In October 1992, over 12,000 canoeists, fishermen, and other nature-conscious
people from all over Japan gathered at the dam-site to demand that
construction be terminated. One group resorted to a 24-day hunger-strike,
but construction continued regardless.
In
the last three years, Nanao Sakaki, described by American poet Gary
Snyder as "Like Thoreau, the unofficial examiner of the mountains
and rivers of all Japan" has led three ten-day river walks along the
full length of the Nagara, from mountain to ocean, to explore the
river's ecology learning "by legs, not head". He believes that the
situation is now truly desperate, and has said that as Japan's government
will not listen to its own citizens, the only hope is to carry protest
to the international level.
-Ken Rodgers (1992)
Copyright
held by the author
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