Kenzaburo Oe - Somersault

"Usually it's the opposite, isn't it?" Patron said. "If one could make such a clean break with the soul, imagine how soundly the body would sleep. I've read John Donne myself. One of his other poems goes like this, doesn't it?

'But name not Winter-faces, whose skin's slack;/ Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack.' If an elderly person's body is like a withered sack, it should be easy for the soul to make its exit, I imagine."

Kizu was embarrassed at having his superficial knowledge exposed.

Instead of reproving him, though, Patron seemed to want only to show Kizu that he too was enamored of poetry.

"I haven't read any poetry for years, Japanese or foreign," Patron said.

"You've recently run across a new poet who has impressed you, have you?"

"It seems like everything about me is coming to light, bit by bit. But you're right," Kizu answered honestly. "Last summer I attended a sympo- sium on art education in a town called Swansea in Wales. The organizer of the seminar presented me with a volume of poetry by a local poet. That evening, as I leafed through it in our cliffside hotel it encouraged me so much-physically and mentally-that I couldn't stay lying down." (As he said this, Kizu realized that he'd always associated this restlessness with the re- lapse of his cancer; now he was pleased to interpret it as presaging his rela- tionship with Ikuo.)

"Despite my age, my face grew red and I paced back and forth in the small hotel room. Even if I were to meet this poet, I almost moaned, I don't have the energy or time left to respond to him, do I? You might suppose this marked some major change in my life, but I'm afraid I'm too wishy-washy a person for that."

"You said it was Wales, but the poet wasn't Dylan Thomas, I assume?

Since you said you've just recently discovered him." Patron asked this quickly, like some teasing child.

"The poet's name is R. S. Thomas."

"What kind of poems were they? Can you remember a verse, any at all?"

Patron asked, even more impatiently.

"I'm afraid I can't memorize verses like I used to… About his themes, though, maybe because his name is Thomas, he wrote several poems about Doubting Thomas. He wrote from Thomas's viewpoint, discussing the rea- sons why he had to touch Jesus' bloody wounds before he believed in the resurrection."

Patron's almond-shaped eyes were unusually intense as he listened.

"I wonder if you would read tome from his poetry collection?" he asked, making it clear this was not a passing wish. "Even if just once a week. Ikuo will be working in our office, and he's told me you have an interest in our activities too. For the past ten years I've needed to do this kind of study but haven't been able to."

Thus Kizu's meeting with Patron was so successful they decided that once a week Kizu would come and give Patron lectures on R. S. Thomas- something that, considering his art background, was way outside his field of expertise. As they drove home, Kizu found it strange that things had turned out the way they did, but Ikuo seemed to have expected it all along.

Kizu already had a paperback edition of Thomas's poems, the one he received in Wales, but he bought a volume of his collected works at the uni- versity co-op, along with a reference work on his poetry, and had them deliv- ered to his apartment. His own copy was filled with notes, and he wanted to present Patron with a clean and complete edition.

Instead of giving private lectures to Patron, Kizu planned just to read the poems together and discuss them, though two or three days later, when he was up far into the night, preparing, Dancer called him, and he headed off to their office despite the late hour. She explained to him that Patron's de- pression was back and he was staying up late and sleeping through the morn- ings. Kizu was led into the bedroom study; Ikuo, who'd driven him over, stayed out in the office beside Dancer and Ogi.

Kizu had selected as their first poem one from the collection Between Here and Now that was written when the poet was about the same age as Kizu and Patron: "You ask why I don't write.

But what is there to say?

The salt current swings in and out of the bay, as it has done time out of mind. How does that help?

It leaves illegible writing on the shore. If you were here, we would quarrel about it.

People file past this seascape as ignorantly as through a gallery of great art. I keep searching for meaning.

The waves are a moving staircase to climb, but in thought only.

The fall from the top is as sheer as ever. Younger I deemed truth was to come at beyond the horizon.

Older I stay still and am as far off as before. These nail-parings bore you? They explain my silence.

I wish there were as simple an explanation for the silence of God."

Patron had a lot to say about the poem. It occurred to Kizu that Patron's insomnia was due less to depression than to the recent intellectual stimula- tion that had entered his life and was cutting down on his hours of sleep.

Patron's large, moist eyes reminded Kizu of a photo he'd seen of a nocturnal marsupial from Tasmania.

'"You asf{why I don't write. I But what is there to say?' That line makes me recall a very pressing matter," Patron blurted out, for all the world like a bright yet rash child. "I've never written a thing, ever since I was young. In a way, though, I guess what I did up to the Somersault was a kind of writing.

Guide helped me in this, of course. The things I experienced in my trances I couldn't put into clear words, but I told them to Guide and he'd translate them into something intelligible.

"After the Somersault, I wasn't able to fall into any major trances, which Guide was aware of. This last half year, though, I could tell Guide wanted to say something to me, something like the first two lines of the poem. 'Why don't you fall into any trances? And why don't you tell me your visions?' But it, for instance, I were to fall into a trance now, I know I wouldn't come into con- tact with anything transcendental. Which is why I don't make the effort.

That's all I can say, if 'you asf^ why.

'"But what is there to say?'" he continued. "I'm holed up in this place as in a hideout, not looking at the tides in the bay every day. But for a long time I have been letting time flow from my heart-the movement the poet com- pares to the tides. These past ten years I've been doing nothing, merely ob- serving the flow of the tides in my own heart.

"Time… the flow of the tides move indeed. 'How does that helpT That's exactly right. 'It leaves illegible writing/ on the shore. If you were here,/we would quarrel about it.' Guide was by my side, but I never spoke to him of that writ- ing. When it flows out of my heart, what does time inscribe? Even if it could be deciphered, I know it would be meaningless. There would be nothing to quarrel about.

"But people live their lives for all they're worth, knowing nothing. I keep searching for meaning.'

' That's the truth. I didn't expect that everything would be thrilling in life. If someone accused me of just sitting on the beach, staring vacantly before me, I couldn't deny it. Sometimes when I feel in good spirits, that is still 'in thought only,' just climbing the stairs of waves.

"That's so painfully true! 'The fall from the top is as sheer/ as ever.' It's true. Every single day and night, all I've thought about is what happened ten years ago. The way I fell then, I continue to fall, moment after moment, in my mind.

"The next stanza expresses exactly how I feel right now. 'Younger I deemed truth! was to come at beyond the horizon./Older I stay still and ami as fay- off as before' What does 'these nail-parings' really point to? At any rate, here I am, sitting here blankly staring at the horizon. It's no wonder Guide got an- gry and asked why.