Seals and Clouds

A seal rides the northern tide. Butterflies pass among graves, radio antennas surround the stars, and a child calls from a bamboo grove. In Seals and Clouds, Kitahara Hakushū turns ordinary sights into an intricate world of color, fragrance, and sound.

This extensive collection moves from hymns to ancient gods and delicate studies of birds and flowers to the Sea of Okhotsk, Ainu landscapes, moonlit gardens, and the quiet labor of water-country villages. Domestic tenderness shares the page with solitude, modern machinery, and the poet’s historical imagination.

Hakushū, a major voice in modern Japanese poetry, also writes candidly about revision and the elusive life within a single sound. His preface and afterword reveal the ambition and self-doubt behind the poems. This new English translation includes the complete collection and the author’s notes, preserving physical verse lines and stanza divisions, with concise explanations of selected terms and uncertain readings. AI-assisted translation, prepared and edited by Valentin Sarić.