The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color. The layers of the Border Range, indistinguishable one from another, cast their heaviness at the skirt of the starry sky in a blackness grave and somber enough to communicate their mass. The whole of the night scene came together in a clear, tranquil harmony.
Yasunari KawabataBut a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love; a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser.
Yasunari KawabataThe labor into which a heart has poured its whole love--where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when?
Yasunari KawabataA poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.
Yasunari Kawabata