intensely she had gazed at it from the deck

The Doson Peninsula, with its white lighthouse on the top of a cliff and the green woods on the island made her recall, as in a dream, how intensely she had gazed at it from the deck of the boat, thinking she would never see the sight again in her life. But now, while she sat alone forlornly, all the views that had once enchanted her so much appeared to have almost faded away, dim and colorless, almost forgotten, merely to bore her.

Floating Clouds, 1965, by Hayashi Fumiko, tr. Y. Koitabashi and M.C. Collcutt



(life is grotesque when we catch
it in quick perceptions –
at full vent – history
shaping itself)

Notes on a visit to the Le Tuc d’Audoubert, 1982, Clayton Eshleman, in Postmodern American Poetry, 1994, ed. Paul Hoover