From Kawaguchigo station,
I hopped on a bus direction Lake Saiko
I walked relentlessly,
My dog yapping as he saw Mount Fuji

Penetrating the forest,
I unleashed my Akita
Just been awarded Akutagawa
I have become ill with boredom

My grandmother’s face
Rises in the mahogany sun,
A geisha with murky lips
She tints muds with an insane laugh

In my resentful consciousnes
I keep one regret : indulging to literary gaze
Forsaking martial arts
For the burden of an ordered life

Lost into contemplating
The morning that burns Aohikagara
(also names the forest’s sea, forest by the Mount Fuji)
The lava rigidified under Mount Fuji
Keeps our most damning secrets

My dog suddenly howls
A shard of glass glistens on earth ;
A deer and a bat
Just flew upon mousses

My dog’s blood shines on the cold glass,
The struck trunk of a Tsuga pine,
And a crimson wolf are to be seen
Just in front of where I was

Two forest rangers hear his grunting
And shoot the forest
Trees bleed at this assassination
Their blood will be safe in frozen waters

On a drifting ice block,
A common crane flew away
I am drowning into the iced sea
Of a historical past

I see Kitakyushu town again
Flowered archs, violet wisteria,
Blossoming clouds, like brushes,
And Hokkaido floating landscapes — it is winter,

The sea’s angels
(also calles slugs/sea’s butterflies, thanks to their fins that resemble wings)
Shimmering bodies with orange and blue glints
As the present slaps me back
The red wolf still howls in front of me

« I shall be, he said, your repentance,
Do walk until you reach the lava cavern of this forest,
Hallucinated pilgrim,
And then, narrate my achievments.

A stitch on my stomach stupefies me
As I lean on the thick foliage
My dog leaps onto the glowing figure
But who could go through a hazy shadow ?

« Tell me why, Temülün brother,
Temüjin born from iron,
Who came to this world holding a clot of blood into your fist,
Offspring of a wild deer and of Alan’Qoa,

The woman impregnated by a shaft of sunlight,
Why are you interested in a sickly traveler ?
« They are a few, those who can see
This red wolf into the sea of trees, he answered

But you, who already encountered death,
You do know the price of blood,
And thus, do narrate my story,
Then you are the one able to see me

Later, coming back to my place
The rain poured grayish from the sky,
Pollution double-locked
From my study whose walls became frail,

It took me two days to write down
Gengis Khan’s disheveled ride
Every night opening the window
Tokyo was shivering under the yellings neons’ lights

And the incendiary fur of the wolf
Was burning my old man’s eyes
« I killed a bear with my bare hands,
The God of all Skies can testify my crimes, he said ;

To win Börte’s heart,
I killed – and once my father got
Poisoned amidst the steppes,
I longed to return to happiness’ shores

My cat’s eyes accompanied me,
I was proclaimed Oceanic Monarch*,
(*Tchingis Khagan, that is to say « Universal Monarch »)
I soon defeated the Xia and the Tatars,
The Khitan and the Qarluq,

Keeping an eye on the Jin dynasty,
I conquered Manchuria,
God forbid that I strangled that many men,
But what is death, if not the night of the victorious ones ?

My armies crossed the Great Wall,
Beated back the flows of the Yellow River,
Got hold of Bukhara and Samarcande
Occupied Balkh far until the Indus

I wielded infamous reflex bows
Cherished the princess’ bodies
Of arrows shot above my shoulder ;
History remembers how Scythian arrows

And canon pulver removed ennemy camps
Fifteen centuries after Alexandre
My shadows ruled Eurasia
Thus write down my darkness, Yasushi

One evening falling from my horse
During a hunting with my son Tolui,
That my spirit kisses his soul !
My cenotaph still holds my bow,

And a mist made of regrets
Since a thousand years, a few guards watch
My volcanic remains,
The Golden Horde trempled on my words,

In the mist my childen fall asleep,
The earth buds in oblivion
I only resurface once a year to whom
Poured as much blood as I,

Even if that blood falls on the coldness of paper