″Sound of waves″

 

Shadow of waves under the sky with stars.

 

Sound of waves along the shore with melodies.

 

Eternal life plays the music, plays for nobody else,


plays the song of fate.

 

                                                                          2013. 7. 24.       Yoshihiro Inoue 




"Christmas"



A silent, stone-cold Christmas in jail.

Each time I recall my thoughtless childhood,                                             
In heaps my sins strike me.

I wake to the radiant stars of Christmas eve,

Looking up, trembling in cold concrete

Now stepping far away in time,

A ring will come, dear to all 

I feel the loving bell, a soft tinkle away.

 

                            2012. 12. 25 Yoshihiro





"Fallen leaves "


Through autumn mountains wheels the fallen leaves, drifting softly on the ground that nurtures new life.

They whisper in silence impart life into forms, and wither in meditative sin.


                                                                                 2012. 10. 17 Yoshihiro 





"Flowers of the Autumn Equinox"


Flowers of the autumn equinox Bloom in a nameless field

Crimson petals bright against blue sky

Speak to compassion for the dead.

Oh flowers of the autumn, Please cure sorrows.

May teardrops blossom those back to life.

                                                   
                                                   2012. 9. 24 Yoshihiro




 Innocent love


    In the mute autumn night The prison resounds with crickets’ songs

Those delicate tones, piece by piece,

Fragile and extreme, so beautiful.

The living creatures in ecstasy of innocent love

Flourish in darkness, singing rin rin rin ri-n rin rin

Never free from sadness to live, Let us survive the depths of despair.



                                                                                                                       2012. 9. 10 Yoshihiro





Shower of Cicadas


 A shower of Cicada's crying at mid-summer-

the melody of delicate life,

transient and passionote love songs.

When I bend my ears to the music

The pain of sin bitterly surges Having cut others' life.

Alas, cicadas! Forgive me.

  Please heal my great sorrow for others.   
                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                               2012. 8. 21 Yoshihiro






Prayer for Life


Fire-rings blossom in the night

Dimly reflecting on the window of a jail. 

I remember the days of summer in my hometown

Regretting the gravity of sin.

The more submerged in the dark of no exit,

The more I sense someone watching our life, Lighting all the sorrow of sin in silence.


                                                                                                              2012. 8. 8 Yoshihiro 




                                                                                                                 

Ｐｒａｙｅｒ　ｏｆ　ａ　Ｆｒｏｇ

 

In a rice field of a distant hometown, A frog starts to sing at the first appearance of farming With rain falling unforeseen, The singing and sounds of the frog, rain, and sky come together, like companions.

 

As I grew older the frog’s cries become white noise Sounds of little creatures clutter my closed mind. In my despair at the world without hope I tossed an answer at life’s purpose, like a question on a school test, and joined “Aum Shinrikyo” in their “last battle for salvation” mentioned in the Bible.

 

Don’t question! Don’t think! No salvation for me and my afflictions. In blank stupor, I did what I was told Away from home, ensnared in dogma I strayed a path where I feared my own footsteps

 

Intoxicated in rituals, whatever they gave I did Only in jail did my senses came back, piece by piece. And what I saw was a sea of suffering, of cutting other’s life However terrified I am of what was done, There’s no cure for the hearts of those victims, that unceasing pang of helplessness.

 

The curtain of Autumn rises The crickets start to sing, Their songs resounding in my foolish mind. Downpour of rain dims in the cries from the dark Lonely lives vanish in the law of nature Just a gaze makes tears fall like the rain

 

My parents, my high school teacher, And other caring hands wish me to live and atone my past Taking the cult’s crimes as my own sin With regret, I live with the suffering of those victims

 

Now, I wonder whose child is the frog from the fields? With insight mother said: “It’s a pure monk from a true Dharma” And it cries ? “Namo Amitabha” But alas, weighed by my sins I only have one road. Never could I be with the frog, Palms joined and praying “Namo Amitabha”.

 

Gratitude cannot cure the soul of a sinner (Buddha’s and Bodhisattva’s dedicate their being to save all) Please answer, There seems no saving for evil sins The frog keeps crying deep from that dark abyss Knowing how suffering and life interlink. By invoking the Buddha’s, may a rain of compassion fall into the heart Of a hopeless man beyond saving.



2012. 1. 13 Yoshihiro

 


Moonlight Prison



In the clear cold night, the white winter moon shines, Rising slowly through a crack of the prison window, Like rays diffusing the dark ocean floor Its boundless warmth brightens the black painted sky Pervading all, unwavering and unceasing, Yet it casts a shadow against the wall - the haunts of sin, not forgiving, not forgetting, Against sons and daughters of kin and kind, those precious bonds, Those cherished ties of care and hope, Those untold lives and nurtured dreams -



all seized and severed by me.



This irreversible, unutterable, ghastly stain I cling to the day it fades from me Gasping pain gnashes my heart Wordless, helpless in this dark of death My heart speeds up… To beat itself from memory. I look at the sky… What's to be done? Nothing.



Nothing to redeem the crime, to ease the pain, those incessant pangs that puncture and grind… Unending anguish of that ceaseless past… Cries that mute the prison siren The shrieks of sin, whirls of hell I flounder, plunged into the thrashing sea



Each man is blessed at times of birth Dim and blind in ignorance, I sinned This unbearable torrent of human weakness



Yet a criminal's eyes is just that of any man The dawning sun paints the Western Buddha Field and beams impartially into this prison, into the flowers, the table, and me as well. Oh, my mind keeps wandering back in darkness! Even then, will the light remain?



Like this…beyond waiting for hope… The winter moon radiates… … to dispel the dark and stains of sin …



Let it brighten this lonesome path!


          
2012. 1. 5 Yoshihiro　Ｉnoue