Aries

Where should a restless soul sail: toward quiet woods, earthly pleasure, remembrance, or the open sea of compassion and endeavor? In Aries, trees, flowers, birds, water, and stars give shape to that question. A remembered gaze changes a winter sky; a grebe becomes a figure of purification; a demon finally reveals the face of the self.

These sixty-four poems move between temple gardens, festival streets, solitary fields, and imagined heavenly palaces. Intimate lyrics of parting stand beside musical ballads in which women question birds about loss and renewal. Courtly images, Buddhist language, and Christian figures share a world where earthly art and spiritual longing continually meet.

Susukida Kyūkin (1877–1945) was a Japanese poet and essayist whose richly patterned literary diction gives this collection its distinctive atmosphere. Published in 1906, Aries appears here in a complete new English translation preserving its poem sequence, verse lines, numbered parts, and original author’s notes, with concise cultural annotations.