Night Flowing River
Wearing a grey cowboy-style sort of formal Western jacket given to me by Peter Fonda's wife Becky in Montana, "You have to dress up sometimes," and on the right sleeve a borrowed black armband from Shiina Takako here in Tokyo, "This is perfectly all right." "But I don't want to offend anyone," I reply. "You won't offend anyone. This is all right." "But I'm a foreigner," I reply. "It's all right," and so then I go to my very first funeral ever. I've never been to a funeral in my land of America, and I start walking toward Aoyama Saijoh.
Maybe a kilometer away.
On a very hot afternoon.
To my first funeral.
. . . and then I'm
in the current of the
night flowing river
waiting to flow inside
Aoyama Saijoh
to say good-bye
to Terayama Shuji.
I've never been very good
at figuring out the volume
of large groups, but
there must have been
thousands of people there,
dressed in black, flowing
inside to place a white
chrysanthemum in front
of his memory.
There were so many of us
that we had to wait outside
in the hot sun before
we could go inside.
I've never been to a more
quieter place than the
silence of so many people
moving like a night flowing
river.
It was so quiet that
I saw a black ant
crawl under a man's shoe
in front of me.
The ant crawled under the
right shoe passing between
the heel and the sole.
The funeral-black shoe
was like a midnight bridge
over the ant. Then the
ant was inbetween the man's
legs.
The river of mourners had
stopped moving for a moment.
All it would have to do
would be to start moving
right now and that black ant
would be at its own funeral.
Then the ant started crawling
toward the man's left shoe
with all intent to pass under
this shoe as it had done with
the right shoe.
I looked up from the ant
to the head of the procession
motionless outside the funeral
home.
The procession still wasn't
moving, but it was a long distance
between that man's legs
for an ant to crawl over to
and under the left shoe,
and the future itself is as
fragile and uncertain
as that ant's journey.
The procession paused like
stationary black glass
just long enough for that
ant to make it under the
man's shoe and into the future,
and then the procession moved
effortlessly like a night flowing
river into Aoyama Saijoh.
Good-bye, Terayama Shuji.
źródło: American Dust (Brautigan Archives)
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tekst za archiwum "american dust" (brautiganarchives.xyz)
10.06.2026