Shinigami no Monogatari

By nature fair as the moon,

With talents to match a fairy,

Yet so eccentric that all marvel at her.

To her, men are filthy;

Rich men in silk are vulgar and loathsome.

She knows not that superiority fosters hatred,

For the world envies too much talents.

By the purple sky of the setting sun,

She will fade away,

Like a rainbow-colored bubble.

Her rouge and handkerchief,

Her youth and beauty, all wasted

For a man she both despises and loves.

Even as a crystal rose dropped in thick mud,

Young scions of noble houses will sigh for her.

She is in a cradle left in swift waters,

And living in hard times, who will dote on her?

With luck, she is born too courageous and open-hearted,

Ever to take a love affair to heart.

Like bright moon and gentle zephyrs in the Phoenix Shrine,

Fate matches her with a handsome husband.

May she live with him for long years,

To make up for her wretched childhood!

But overhead the clouds disperse,

The river of honey runs dry.

This is the common fate of vulnerable men,

Useless it may be to resist.

Do you know me?

Here is a sharp-edged sword

Slice me with it

And try to understand

Even a small part of me.

I come to you in one piece

And I see myself halved in your eyes

One part covered by the dark velvet night

The other half radiant silver of hope.

Rarely do you see me like this

Either I am totally unseen

Or I stand in my full splendor

But now I am two in front of you.

Do you prefer the cool dark me?

Or would you rather bathe in my warmth?

Do you find the dark rose a beauty?

Or is the silver leaf more to your taste?

But know me well and answer me…

Do you know who I am?

A tear escapes from the corner of my right eye…

The sunlight streams into the room

And the illusion of summer begins…

“What do you want to be?”

Your soft voice breaks the chains of time

And gently reaches my sleeping ears.

“What do you want to be?”

I open my eyes with silent stares on your hair

Flowing like golden silk threads.

You appear to me again, angelic apparition

Your body is clothed in the shining white

And your hair is adorned with wild flowers.

You have plucked out a strange leaf

From aeons ago when we first met

And place it on my reluctant hand.

“What do you want to do?”

You ask again with patience

And you look at me with sincere anxiety.

I look at you with confused eyes

I open my mouth to speak

But the winds of silence break my voice.

Instead of a reply to your question

I look at the leaf with wonder

The soft feather leaf of the purest white.

You humble yourself and I feel

Your soft velvet lips gently touch my right cheek

I float on the clouds of divine peace.

The air picks me up from where I stand

I cannot see your eyes nor your nose

But I see clearly those soft lips of sweet pink smile.

I awake from my dream

The second illusion of summer

Takes its toll from the wingleaf.

Everywhere is an invisible mirror

I can see you clearly from here

I can see how you flutter your wings

How you dance from one flower to another.

How I’d love to touch your rainbow body

A gift from Heaven when others were asleep

You, who shine like a prism diamond,

Is the sole delight of my hungry eyes.

One day, I pray I’d get my wish

The stars conspire with the moon, the moon with the sun

And the rosy dawn urges you to come near me

Ah, you dance in front of me like an innocent fairy!

You perform for me your lovely steps of seduction

I look at you, enchanted by a goddess

The day wears on and the Purple Princess takes her reign

You change your color to a bright shade of crimson.

Every step is pain, every flutter is sorrow

The dance you perform is the dance of death

Suited to one who torments the feelings of others,

Yet offered to one who weeps in agony over a broken heart.

I watch you transform into a lonely maiden

Blood is your garment and steely eyes your weapon

A cold apparition knowing neither joy nor pain

The invisible barrier goes between us.

No matter how hard I try to break the mirror

It does not move, the silent witness of self-destruction!

You approach me and we pretend to hold each other

The pain of not being able to embrace!

Tears touch the wall but the wall coldly ignores

Your blood is flowing freely but you don’t mind

My voice is silently shouting and you look at me

With that beautiful unfeeling gaze of yours.

The moon offers a drop of melancholia

And the whole world is clothed in a shade of blue

Your shining blood is the only other color

And the scent of honey overwhelms me.

You give out the first whine of your existence

And the wall is shattered into a million pieces

I reach for you, to clothe your nudity

But you prefer the warm flow of your blood.

I hug you from the deepest part of me

I share in all you have, even your blood

If time stops now, I would not mind

I want us to stay like this forever.

But the stars conspire once more with the moon,

And the moon, with her consort, the sun

To cleanse the world of blood-stained creatures

You must vanish into nothing, my butterfly!

Ah, I am left all alone in this strange world

The silent dance that imitates the cycle of life

The broken gazes that uncover our emotions

Are thorns I dare not pluck out from my heart.

I slash my chest open without second thought

And took out my heart still pulsing with life

Blood goes out of my body but I care not

And a small white butterfly approaches…

Let me taste the rouge on your lips…

            I am as pale as the moonlight on a foggy night,

            The blood beneath my skin rushes out

            To free itself from this body of desire,

            As the needles of memory pierce my skin.

            Your words are forged out of the sharpest steel

            And you care not to whom you hurl those daggers

            You has flung the sharpest right into my heart

            And there it stayed until this very minute.

Let me taste the rouge on your lips…

            I am as cold as the permafrost

            I need the warmth from the blue flames of sadness

            Let my thoughts be sent directly to your heart,

            That you may know how you make me suffer.

Let me taste the rouge on your lips…

            I am immobile as a marionette,

            Only for a taste of your lips do I endure this agony.

            But fain would I bow down to Death’s scythe,

            If not a touch of your hand I feel this instant.

Let me taste the rouge on your lips…

            My blood scatters around me

            Like red petals against the backdrop of snow

            Ah… the pain and the sadness and the torture…

            They all make me want to taste the rouge on your lips.

I wake up to the sound of the rain,

Pounding furiously on cemented ground.

The infinite crystal needles from Heaven

Fall down upon the vulnerable hearts.

The sound of the rain is music to my ears,

Yet why does it make me want to cry?

For some particular reason,

I want to be one with the rain.

If Heaven is an idyllic paradise,

Why does it cry every now and then?

Or maybe it hurls the unwanted passions

To the world already inhabited by sorrow.

I have forgotten how it feels like

To be totally drenched in the rain.

My umbrella has shielded me from painful showers

How my body longs to be weakened now!

Ah, rainy days paint a melancholy scene

How beautiful nature works her piece!

My chest is being suffocated from the sad beauty

To the point of breaking into a million pieces.

Perhaps it would be nice to be together

Out there in the open, being drenched in the rain.

I would like to tell you a lot of things

While Heaven unleashes her passions.

Perhaps we could be together

After that moment in the rain.

Yet that moment is just a dream I weave

As I lie among the emerald serpents.

Everything is the rain’s fault!

The pa9inful longing inside my heart

Intensifies to the point of breaking me,

But why do I love the rain?

On a rocking chair

A whisper of nostalgia

Tears slide down the cheeks

Of beauty so fair

Hurt with deep melancholia

Nepenthe she seeks

Myriad of dreams rise

Alloy of gold and silver

In Utopia’s fire

Ephemeral eyes

Seeking a golden feather

Consumed in a pyre

The eyes of the moon

Avert to a far distance

Silk threads disappear

The heart in a swoon

An amaranth gives fragrance

But demands a tear

Thousand of miles she must sail through hail and storm,

Giving up herself and everything she has,

But afraid to distress her own declining years.

She tells herself: “Do not shed tears,

Everything has been fated aeons ago                 .

People meet and then they bid farewell.

From now on, I shall live alone.

Let me live in peace.

Do not worry over the course of events.”

At the height of passion and desire,

Gloom comes for her.

With eyes closed, she succumbs to its every wish.

As her lively soul begins to wane,

So far her own beyond the distant memories,

That in a dream, she finds and tells her lover,

“The new moon has gone into hiding;

You must find someone other than me.”