Deathbed

This poem is often interpreted as an elegy for a woman—possibly a prostitute—whom Nakahara knew intimately.

In Japan, the autumn sky is often associated with a clear, blue expanse. Excluding the typhoon season, Japanese autumn is generally a pleasant time for travel. However, the sky in this poem is described as “dull-colored” (鈍色, nibi-iro), the color of lead—dark, heavy, and oppressive—evoking a sense of thick, gloomy clouds. The black horse that appears next—described in the original as “Black horse’s — eye’s — light” (黒馬の、瞳の、光)—is certainly not a source of brilliant illumination. The first two lines of the first stanza are profoundly dark.

Nakahara deliberately uses blank spaces and line breaks. While each stanza consists of four lines, the latter two lines are indented by two characters. These latter two lines in each stanza may well represent his inner feelings. I translated the line as ‘The lily, having lost its water, simply falls’ because I do not believe this lily is something he is currently observing. The lily that the woman by the window once tended has likely long since withered. He is recalling these lost things—the woman, the lily—and feeling, ‘Ah—how hollow the heart.’

I struggled considerably with the treatment of “God” (神) in the second stanza. Although Nakahara himself was not Christian, his adoptive parents were, and his hometown, Yamaguchi Prefecture, has deep ties to Catholicism. Given his familiarity with French literature, I believe “God” here refers to the Western concept. The line ‘There is neither God nor any guiding light’ feels less like an expression of his despair and more like a question that carries into the fourth stanza. Covered by thick clouds, with no God or guide in the sky, the woman by the window passed away. The question is: Where did she go?

A more faithful literal translation of the third line of the second stanza would be ‘White sky blinded.’ However, I sense a nuance that the sky is not so much sightless as it is simply unwilling or unable to see. In Japan, the expression ‘O-tentō-sama is watching’ (the sun is watching) is often used in moral education, based on the idea of the sun as a divine presence. Yet, this autumn sky is covered by thick clouds, and the sun is invisible. Perhaps this lack of sunlight is why the wind is so cold.

The third stanza can be read entirely as Nakahara’s inner reflection. Who washed the hair by the window? I imagined that the woman may have washed Nakahara’s hair. I felt a tenderness toward her in the softness of her hands. He must have found comfort in the sound of the water dripping by the window, enveloped in the morning light. Incidentally, the original word for ‘wet’ (nurete) in the line ‘The morning sun was “nurete”‘ is read as “spilled” (koboreru). This suggests a scene where the morning light enveloped the body, much like water wetting the hair.

The first two lines of the fourth stanza abruptly bring the world into stark reality, with the raw sounds of life. The town’s bustle and the tangled voices of children burst into the poem—a vivid intrusion of life. They hit the monochrome world with a striking, almost uncompromising force. Yet, Nakahara abruptly cuts this off with phrases like ‘However’ or ‘But even so.’ This is close to a rejection. Though the town is noisy and the children are lively, he shifts the emotional tone again, as if to say none of it matters.

He then turns his thoughts to the soul, which is both the departed woman’s and his own. He is watching the soul disappear into a sky with neither God nor guide. This poem is an elegy, but the only direct emotional utterance is ‘Ah—how hollow the heart.’ Nevertheless, the two-stage shift in the final stanza and the concluding two lines make this elegy unmistakably Nakahara’s—quiet, unresolved, and aching with memory.

This note reflects my personal reading of the poem at this moment, offered not as a definitive analysis, just one way of listening to Chuya’s voice.