The Bailiff and Other Writings

A poet spends his strength supporting younger writers while his own family struggles to buy rice. When a newspaper rumor brings a moneylender and bailiff to his door, even inherited books and an unborn child’s clothes become property to be inventoried.

Elsewhere, Paris offers a dance hall’s dizzying staircase, a painter’s bright Montmartre studio, and a romantic excursion whose final revelation unsettles its narrator. A South Seas pavilion provokes a fierce poetic protest against lifeless display and the crowds watching its performers. Other poems move through desolation, stubborn resistance, and the struggle to remain alive.

The collection ends in an overgrown Kyoto temple, where a child hears family memories of a serpent’s curse and discovers his brother confined in a ruined hall. His longing for a brighter world collides with adult secrets he cannot yet understand.