Read an Excerpt
New Selected Poems
By Shuntaro Tanikawa, William I. Elliott, Kazuo Kawamura Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Shuntaro Tanikawa, William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78410-069-8
CHAPTER 1
from
Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude
(1952)
Ambitions
I govern the time
by skipping three records.
I reverse time
by going back to largo from finale.
I even govern the BBC
by starting with the middle of Side 3.
'Boys, be ambitious!'
At the Bus Stop
Around the circle here come
a bicycle,
a wrecker,
a jeep.
Around the circle here comes
a 1950 Studebaker
(an exciting proposal for the future).
Around the circle here comes
a thirties Dodge truck
(the offal of modern science).
Around the circle here come
a truck,
a cart,
a motorcycle,
and, last of all,
my shabby silver bus.
A Night
A night –
A good old man who died an hour ago
is ascending towards the sub-stratosphere
on a chariot especially dispatched.
A night –
A child to be born in about an hour
is descending from the sub-stratosphere
astride a stork.
On Olympus
Miss Clotho, Miss Lachesis and Miss Atropos
are drinking coffee
and watching the man and child on TV.
A poet in Tokyo,
while praying,
saw them
on the screen
of the starry sky.
A Grey Stage
Clouds over the early a.m. town, about 90%.
I have left the city behind in a nightmare.
Night rain bleached the neon white.
Both the history of this town
and its geography
have only three or four lines in the encyclopaedia.
Not a single crisp footstep is heard.
Greetings are at zero probability.
Not having a map, I am uneasy.
Suddenly feeling humble,
I make cardboard trees to line the streets.
A grey stage; a sky-blue nursery tale.
In the early a.m. town, 90% humidity.
And also some sort of inorganic matter ?
I walk faster.
Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude
Human beings on this small orb
sleep, waken and work, and sometimes
wish for friends on Mars.
I've no notion
what Martians do on their small orb
(neririing or kiruruing or hararaing).
But sometimes they like to have friends on Earth.
No doubt about that.
Universal gravitation is the power of solitudes
pulling each other.
Because the universe is distorted,
we all seek for one another.
Because the universe goes on expanding,
we are all uneasy.
With the chill of two billion light-years of solitude,
I suddenly sneezed.
Hospital
Blue sky and sun dissolve in a dirty creosol solution
and in the dark corridor not science but eroded emotions pile up
Clothing of even primary colours is defenceless against X-rays.
White gowns also are inconsolable.
When patients
uncertainly confuse their feelings
in the bottom of coloured test tubes,
white doctors
become efficient, cold machines
and operate efficient, cold machines.
I hear no human voices in the host of echoes.
Here, everything is materialism.
A hospital resembles a modern city that keeps no secrets.
Secrets and X-Rays
Although Mr X-Ray has interpreted me only materialistically,
he continues growling, thinking he has found out all my secrets.
In the dark corner, where the red-light burns non-lyrically,
Mr X-Ray's fervour becomes the magnetic power of high voltage
and creates a specially-compounded air.
'This right Lunge is intact ...'
I am conscious of voices in the words of men in white.
Here is a system which passes through me,
and here is a world of 'me' expressed by that system.
There are no bodily secrets in hospitals;
therefore the soul the more keeps secrets.
Nero
(for a much loved little dog)
Nero!
Summer's almost here again.
Your tongue,
your eyes,
your napping –
It all comes back so clearly.
You knew only two summers.
I've known eighteen already.
And right now I remember summers of mine and other people's
in various places –
in Maisons-Lafitte,
in Yodo,
on Williamsburg Bridge,
and in Oran.
And I wonder how many summers
people have known so far.
Nero!
Summer's almost here again.
A summer without you,
a different summer,
quite different.
A new summer's on its way,
bringing lots of different things,
the beautiful, the ugly,
encouraging things, despairing things.
And I ask myself,
what are all these things,
what's brought them on,
what can I do with them?
Nero!
You died.
You went alone where no one could follow.
Your voice,
your touch,
your feelings, even –
it all comes back so clearly.
But Nero!
Summer's almost here again –
a new summer, immeasurably vast!
And
I'll keep on going as usual,
moving through a new summer, autumn, winter,
and spring, expecting still another new summer,
learning to know all things new,
and
answering all my own questions.
A Contemporary Afternoon Snack
In the midst of sighing and shouting
God is not present.
A new model car ran over him.
In a world of metal and conferences
a typewriter is typing a typist.
Law sculpts a black torso
and bank notes grow rich and buy slaves.
Therefore
people can't help longing for wolves.
We mass-produce a million cliffs a minute.
Next we must experiment making space and time.
This drink is a fairy tale.
This cracker is a meadow the colour of wheat.
That cloud is an old-fashioned fugue.
Anyhow I will make the afternoon snack a fantasy.
CHAPTER 2
from
62 Sonnets
(1953)
29
I'm copying down my memories.
Old visions are all good ones.
The winter sunlight that warms my fingers
also falls across today's empty chair.
Between the window's outside and inside
a fragment of the world is suspended.
As I reach to touch it
the beautiful thing gallops away.
I keep gazing at everything.
My heart reluctantly whispers
but love hushes it.
Today returns;
yesterday is a blur;
I can't imagine the shape of tomorrow.
30
I won't let words rest.
At times they feel ashamed of themselves
and want to die, inside of me.
When that happens I'm in love.
In a world otherwise silent
people – only people – chatter away.
What's more, sun and trees and clouds
are unconscious of their beauty.
A fast-flying plane flies in the shape of a human passion.
Though the blue sky pretends to be a backdrop,
in fact there's nothing there.
When I call out, in a small voice,
the world doesn't answer.
My words are no different from those of the birds.
36
I've looked too long at the light –
my shadow is pitch black.
I try to calculate my loneliness
but there's no solution.
All distances return to me again.
Intimate with no one save myself,
I've no place to dispose of my words.
I plot to convert them into sweat.
The heavens are forever a tedious stage setting.
Since everything's under them,
they become the measuring rod of distance.
Yet when I try to don sentimentality,
unfortunately I find the sleeves too short.
I recall my infancy.
43
Clouds collect
the sky's overflowing light.
Wind whispers in my ear
and suddenly a great emptiness awakens.
Turning, I see someone.
I quietly leave my words behind.
People treat them politely.
I sit on the world as on a chair.
People collect
the sounds of the earth.
But no secret murmurings will persuade me.
Yet sometimes a wind-like happiness emerges
from among things indifferent to me,
and when it does I am here again.
45
In a fierce wind
the earth is like a kite.
Even at high noon
we are aware of night.
Wordless, the fretful wind
can only run around.
I think of the wind on another star –
can they be friends?
We have night and day on earth.
Meantime, what are other stars doing?
How do they endure expanding in silence?
Blue sky lies.
While we sleep night whispers the truth.
Then in the morning we say we dreamed.
47
Time saturates the cloudy night sky;
falls like snowflakes, when I stir.
My heart feels cold;
only my blood is warm.
Things enjoyable by day hold their breath –
when I chase them they're no longer there.
Imaginary months and years fill my head.
I set them afire.
Memories burn;
premonitions burn;
today is left a heap of ashen embers.
I can't really believe my own existence
and so I am given tomorrow in exchange for my dreams.
When I awaken, breakfast is in the air.
48
We often hear the dark side of life
referred to solemnly:
graves, hearses, wills ...
These tell us nothing about death.
The living cannot see beyond shadows
and don't know what it's like to lose nothing.
Surrounded by mirrors,
we're always peeping into life in reflection.
Since death lacks mirrors
we shall soon be unselfconscious
and able to be one with the world ...
But in the rainy street today the living are busy living.
The evening paper reports suicides:
we're nothing but the distance which surrounds
death.
53
A cloudy day. No shadows.
And I watched my words sicken.
Trees and grasses sang my songs;
my longings always came back down to earth.
Following the first ominous silence
we plunged pell-mell into a world of loquacity.
If words find their answers among people
they always fall ill apart from people.
I wish my words were as whole as the trees and grass
in that first silence
out of which everything was born.
What words know me intimately?
Instead of myself singing
I'd like hearing myself being sung.
54
I grew unwittingly apart
from the world in which I was born
and can no longer walk again
among the things of the earth.
We know that even love is a possession,
but we can't keep from praying
that life will go on.
And we accept the poverty of our prayers.
I can possess nothing,
though I love
trees, clouds, people.
I can only discard
my overflowing heart –
hesitant to call that an act of love.
55
Even just sitting around
I make my life bear fruit,
not unlike trees that, immobile,
move in the cosmic circle of life.
That I may play sincerely
all the days allotted me
I just keep standing,
until I wither.
I am a discarded vessel
in the shape of waiting,
knowing I'll never be filled.
If I have in this world a part to play,
it is that:
just standing.
56
Isn't the world a puny star in the middle of nowhere?
Twilight ...
the world stands by idly,
as if ashamed of itself.
In such moments
I collect the little names of things
and somehow
I lapse into silence.
Now and then sounds call to the world,
more confidently than my song:
distant whistles, barking, the paper-boy.
In such moments the world is listening,
as breathlessly as twilight,
reaffirming itself sound by sound.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from New Selected Poems by Shuntaro Tanikawa, William I. Elliott, Kazuo Kawamura. Copyright © 2015 Shuntaro Tanikawa, William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
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