Wandering Immigrant (放浪の移民)
Evenings of sadness under the winter sky
thinking, what a pathetic person I’ve been
“Everyone…when they’re young…right?”
the wind sounds like it’s laughing
the rain’s brought in the cold
and all my vague ambitions have been washed away
the edges of one’s humanity wear down over time
and even the smallest things seem magnificent
red becomes bright red
white is pure white
and the ordinary, a wondrous happiness
in the dead of night, I want someone to talk to
so
as I’m peeling an apple
in the harmonious stillness
youthful frustrations melt into the transparent air
and ardent gazes alight on shards of glass
and fond smiles turn towards a dirt-stained wall
I want to say yes to
anything and everything moaning
my tender heart aches
the sound of rain plish plash
like delirious mumblings on the eaves
in the vagrant mind of an opiate haze
I transform hints of happiness into ovoid dreams
but the winter wind
startles the wandering immigrant
冬空に寂しさを見舞ふ宵
哀れな人間よと顧みる
『誰でも若い時には ねえ』
風が嗤笑つてゐるやう
雨に寒さが運こばれて
茫然した野心がいつの間にか流される
人間味が豐に角がとれると
微細なものでも偉大に映つる
赤は眞赤に
白は純白で
平凡は素晴らしい幸幅に
誰れか夜半の相談相手が慾しい
斯う
林檎の皮を剝いてゐると
調和した靜寂に
若き焦燥が透明な空氣に溶け込んでゆく
硝子の破片にも注視は燃へ
汚點の染んだ壁にも愛着は微笑む
何もかも うんうん
合點してやりたい
優しい心が疼いてゐる
雨音が ポツン ポツン
囈言のやうに軒を降りる
私は魔陲劑の後の放心狀態に
幸福の豫感を楕円形の夢にする
されど冬風は
放浪の移民をおびやかす
The longer poem “Hōrō no imin,” or “The Wandering Immigrant,” may allude to the title of an earlier anthology of Japanese American immigrant poetry, Hōrō no uta, or Songs of Wandering, published by a group of Southern California based poets in 1925. Although Hayashida was not a contributor to this anthology, his personal correspondence indicates that he was on friendly terms with the anthology’s editor, the poet Yamazaki Isshin. In this poem, Hayashida dwells less on the physical wandering that one might associate with migrant labor, concentrating instead on the mental wanderings and vagrant thoughts of an immigrant left alone in what could be a single-occupancy room. In this state of isolation, hints and fragments of concrete reality—“an apple,” or “shards of glass,”—mutate into the delirium of an “opiate haze.”