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One Early Morning


It is now 5:30 AM
My body is adhesive by sweat
The day has broken
Shall I go outside and take a walk?

I come out of my study just in pajamas and come to the street
I find a bicycle standing by the farm
A woman wearing farmclothes is crouching and weeding in the farm
What a hard worker she is in this early morning!

A car flowed on the overpass slantingly
A sparrow singing flied aslant, nearly brushing the well-ripe corn field
Electric cables are cutting the sky

I feel pain in my eyes as I didn't sleep through the night at all
Thinking of writing a poem about something like dead dinosaur reportedly
     discovered in the open sea of New Zealand but abandoned back into the
     ocean

The deep green leaves of hydrangea are thick and plenty
Tiger lilies just bloomed and light red roses right over a fence are
So beautiful and vivid
At the opposite side over there
The flowers of crape myrtle are deep red like burning fire
The green of well treated lawn grass is clear and dazzles my eyes

Walking aimlessly
I found myself at the entrance of my rented farm plop
Oh, yeah! Shall I go to see it?

Around the entrance, weeds are overgrowing
Just in the middle of north-western land equally divided into many pieces
I have a rented plot of about 200 square feet

Next to the northern narrow section in my farm where eggplants, cucumbers,
     mini tomatoes, pimentos and normal tomatoes grow
I have sowed several flower seeds, but no sign of sprouts are there, and
     instead, weeds are growing

Because it is the first time for me to plant vegetables, and moreover
I have seldom tended to them
The eggplant trees are very poor, less than half height of other surrounding
     plots'
But, to my surprise
I find plenty of fruits on the eggplant trees, and
I pick the ones good for eating, careful not to hurt the wings and leaves
But, oh the weeds bother me!
The number is few but they are taller than the eggplant trees
Putting the crops aside on the pass
I begin to weed

Ah, there is just one pimento but it is turning to red already!
Oh dear!, where did I put the picked eggplants?
Oh, yeah, they are at that corner of the pass!

Oh, what happened to these tomato trees?
All of them have fallen down from bearing too much fruit
They'll be rotten reaching the soil soon
Really it is true that you have to give props to tomato trees
What happened to this tree? it's broken into pieces from the root

Ah,
This branch bears no fruits!
It is also true that you can not enjoy good crops
If you don't cut off the unnecessary branches
The purposed fertilizer becomes useless

Yes, when I decided to rent this plot
I did think that the modern agriculture in which we can enjoy cucumbers even
     in mid winter is wrong
Farm products are not anything more than farm products
In other words, they must be natural

Yes, exactly, but
It is wrong also to leave them wildly as they are
Say, just like these tomato trees

This means that I am coming out of the nature
Even though I am insisting that I myself am a part of the nature
Nature is love, but I am throwing away that love, in other words
Being eaten by people, tomatoes fulfill nature, that is to say
Love
It's not the tomato's nature to grow wildly like this and to die

<I am talking about tomatoes and other fruits or vegetables
I do not want you to utilize this logic to other things>

In other words,
Being eaten by people is neither a tomato's destiny nor its karma
But a tomato's nature

Oh, this tomato looks the best for eating, let me try it
Picking up one of them grown with no agrochemicals
Wiping it on the side of my trousers, I eat it

Delicious!
How did it come to taste this good?

Yeah, I remember
My mother in my home town once told me when I was a kid
"The rice reaped from infertile land is much more tasty, they say"
I've never tasted such a delicious tomato so far, but if so
Is this because of the infertile land like my farm? or
Is this because it has grown wildly?

I can't tell the reason why
But, why?

Then, all of a sudden
A quite philosophical question as to what purpose I am living
Occurred in my mind

Thinking like this on my tiny farm, I find the harvested are
7 eggplants, 4 mini tomatoes, 2 tomatoes, 3 cucumbers and a pimento
I can't hold them in my arms
I fold the edges of my pajamas and put them in there

On my way home
I find a sparrow chirping on the top of the ranch house
Fully opening her tiny beak

With my cumbersome hands full with crops
I open the door and enter the house
It seems my family is still sleeping
I put the crops into the water

I come back to my study
The room is still bright from the light of lamps as if it was midnight
I open every curtain
The morning flows in and fill the room
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock..........
The sound of the wall clock turned vigorously and cheerfully

I think of the life itself, of chance, and
I murmur to myself
"You must live through it after all, mustn't you?"