Sei Ito (1905-1969), "Melancholy Summer"

[bronze_ribbons]

[pixychelle, this poem reminded me of you, a bit - both because it mentions turtledoves and because someone had pencilled in "T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in the margin of the copy I'm reading]

Already I -- have become tired of such a deep-colored summer.
In the grove the masses of royal fern -- have grown up to their full height and
underneath them
I suppose such things as beetles, frogs, and blue-green dwarves are walking.
This greenness like a sea
must have totally dyed the expression of my eyes.
Turtledoves also
in the forest depths
are very sleepily crying.
Swaying trees are turning over leaves to whiteness,
a wagon even -- could not be seen going rattling above the valley.
The sky has cleared up entirely and,
with not even one memory to enliven my heart,
quickly
this summer will go away and
oh when will a time come
when a surprising thing will happen in my universe?
Until then
even if it is for years and years I
will keep on having a dream impossible to tell.
Girls who were friends of earlier days
all -- know love or are pallid wives of others.
And so -- I at eighteen -- I at nineteen,
being left a solitary retreating figure,
into the forest-depths of the needle-dropping pine trees
disappeared.

- translated by Edith Marcombe Shiffert and Yuki Sawa