In Seiko's poem the huge newt ' something smudged across the borders of its life-span, or its species, found by an old woman in an irrigation channel ' hadn't budged from where it hibernated underneath its flat stone in a forest river, clean enough for even it and wasabe to come to being. Till one day it poked its sleepy nose into the current, stirred its tail, and that alone sufficed to separate it from the peace that there-to-fore had held it thrall. And then, you have to have seen Seiko when she grows ears as an elephant, or antlers as a reindeer, or, in this case, hands come sprouting from her shoulders, squirming in imagined water, to appreciate its struggles, and its whimpering 'Modorenai !' ' 'I can't get back !', as it was carried off to places stories tell us all the great adventures reach. But Seiko is a dancer, and this is Seiko's poem, and I ... I'm only trying to write it down : The creature's smothered cries and hopeless floundering, are what the dancers and the poets teach us about time by swimming in it, out before our eyes.
