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Issue 6 Cover
 
Issue 6
Sample Poem
Names with asterisks link to bios.
 

Title in Japanese

34

First poem in Japanese

43

First poem in Japanese

100

First poem in Japanese


published 1982
*Takashi Hiraide |Poet's name in Japanese

Takashi Hiraide, born in Fukuoka prefecture in 1950, is one of the most well-respected and admired poets coming out of Japan’s postwar generation. He is the author of over 15 books, and is a recipient of several literary awards in the various genres in which he writes. These include poetry in free verse (The Inn), prose poetry (For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut), off-prose poetry (Notes for My Left-hand Diary), tanka (One Hundred and Eleven Tankas to Mourn My Father), criticism (At the Tip of Attack), essay (The Berlin Moment), and fiction (A Guest Cat). He is a Professor of Art Science and a member of the Institute for Art Anthropology at Tama Art University.
 




from For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut


34

A shipwrecked light. Opening your cracked lips still wider, you call in the rusty-haired ocean. Even as you ride into the city of devotion composed only of ephemera and horizon, on the breath of a black horse in January. Your heart crushed upon the seven seas, space torn apart at once as the fabric of water. A person now is a breach of the moment — lacking that which responds, is nothing but a yonder shadow. But look — O twisted edge of the shipwrecked light. This sight of the tendons in your heel, with grains of sand on them, beginning to withstand the pale constriction of your leaps. Amidst the rising scent of grass, of thrashing, of disdain.

43

The spider is genius. The celerity which moves — leading the air mass — the atmosphere level that falls higher than the clouds connecting the seasons. The spider is genius. The brilliance descending omnidirectionally is not a gravity-evading parachute, but striates the entire sky, guiding drops of light towards the ground. And it just lowers itself down along the way. How can there be such transparent bones — bones that flood over, even as they break. And plus he is a seed. With endurance and imagination as nourishment, the scheme is rather null. Sorcery is rather null. A light-handed evil which admits no glory, not even your own. The spider is simply genius.

100

Summoning up my last bit of energy, I shall give a gift to your pale doorway. So that it might become your first bit of food before heading over to the other eye. Whirling tides that are sealed in. And the sun with new bandages. Drupes with wisdom.

translated from Japanese by
*Sawako Nakayasu
Sawako Nakayasu Sawako Nakayasu was born in Japan and has lived most of her life in the US. Her forthcoming books include Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck) and Texture Notes/ (Letter Machine). A translation of For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide in its entirety is forthcoming from New Directions.



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