These poems are among the ones I've
written since all the first ones,
also in Ryoko-in and not in any book.
This one was written for the mother of the place, who
was called Okusan.
It's a priest's mother.
You see, in staying there, whatever I did,
I had to write it.
I didn't have to write a poem.
But whatever I felt, they waited to see, would I write a poem.
If I visited another temple, I would
write a poem that became part of that temple.
Sometimes-- one time, as I remember,
I went to a mountain temple.
A beautiful little place.
And I was just enjoying it and enjoying.
Suddenly, they turned to me and said, where is the poem?
So I had to write a poem right away.
And this was a ceremony that Kobori-san's mother invited me
to suddenly.
And she didn't speak English.
She suddenly had the thought of inviting me
to her ceremony, which was tea of her class
under the plum trees in bloom and in the garden,
in the vegetable garden, all the things laid out on the ground.
And her class in traditional tea ceremony,
which she gave free to factory workers and people dressed
in their beautiful kimonos, no one spoke a word of English.
That happened to me constantly there.
I was very touched.
So I wrote this poem to give to her that evening for dinner
and had the experience that came again and again and again,
that without a word of a language known to either of us,
it exactly fitted.
This is what the ceremony was about.
I wonder why you learned to talk.
"Our mother teaches grace with tea,
pours ancient skies into our cups.
We drink, students, in her garden.
New blossoms are gnarled, plum tree branches
speak in the wind of love's safe routes.
Spring, returning daughter, welcome."