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Salmon Coming Home in Search of
Sacred Bliss
Mieko
Chikappu
Translated
from Japanese by Jane Coddry Langill with Taki Rie and Judith Roache
The salmon come riding home
Home from long journeys through great seas
How magnificent they flash!
Look, home is just ahead, up there
Push on a little more.
Weaving the waves together, the salmon
Dance in small, joyful jumps
Scales shining a bright silver.
Riding the rhythm of the breaking waves,
They twist their bodies and leap!
But it does not always go as well as hoped.
Twice and three times they jump, and again.
Exhausted, some become swallowed by the waves,
Where they crest on sandy shore
Weakly, twice, three times they try to jump again
And finally fall back where they lie.
Awaiting them, the gulls and the crows,
Their ordeal fated from beyond time.
Yielding to the resistance of the river
The salmon come riding home
To their birth place, home
To their precious motherland.
This river that sent them off to sea,
This home from where they emerged
Home river, resisting, not holding them back
Whispers promises of life.
The crashing waves of the river
Never troubled with such matters,
Break on the shore again and again, unchanging.
Only those who catch the rhythm of these waves
Will last to create life anew.
Ride the waves and jump!
Ahh, a splendid leap!
Yes, you will be fine nowYou have made it through the hardest part.
Now you need only swim home, swift now
For home is just up there, just ahead.
As the salmon go home to their mother river, the river,
The river goes home to its mother, the mountain
And in the home mountains
Reside the wisdom and teachings of the ancestors.
Maku-Ta-Fuchi (Ekashi), ancestors
Deep mountain-dwelling – grandmothers (grandfathers).
Our progenitor god, the guardian deities.
The mountains, the breasts of mother earth.
The rivers that flow there,
The mother’s milk of mother earth,
Take from the mountain-dwelling ancients
Full measure of nurture
To nourish the salmon.
The salmon following
The familiar scent and taste
Ride the river home.
Aflame with the crimson color of marriage, the salmon
Seek their lovers.
Spinning out life
Is an act of death.
For the salmon
Life lives in death.
The salmon bets its life on love,
Beautiful evanescent ceremony,
Bodies pressed together on the river bed.
Lovers push each other’s passion
Until it hurts.
Pure, straight love for survival.
The single act of love
Risks all.
The salmon die
Ahh, so tenderly.
So fiercely flames their passion
They love each other to death
In transcendent moment of ultimate bliss.
To perform this sacred ceremony of love
The salmon ride the river home.
Now cradled in the arms of home,
You may rest
For you will live on
In the memories of your children
You will endure forever
So rest well now,
Kamuy chep
Oh, most sacred fish!
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