Nambara Jushi

Ten “Tankas” from “The Endless Sky”

In heavy rain my clothes got dripping wet

And clung to my body,

I ran through the devil’s shop curtains.

The boy failed to ask

Whether he should throw away all of the rotten orange 

Or part of it.

I was hit harshly

But I stood up 

Even though bleeding heavily.

Fingers pick red apples shining under the blue sky 

Kalium is emitting 

From the primary somatosensory cortex.

I, blindfolded,

Slightly feel a knife near my neck. 

The bell tolls.

The ogre with bloody eyes

Angrily bit and tore out from inside my body 

And sat as cool as a cucumber.

Out of a lot of masks hidden in the closet

I select a mask for today 

Wondering which is most appropriate.

I draw with a single stroke of the brush in the same way

The flight path of a bird which would fly in the sky 

Where I would not be in the future.

“The full moon is especially big in the night sky, isn’t it?”,

I want to ask all the people of the world both in the past and in the present.

The moon is full tonight.

The human comedy is coming out of the brain network,

What value does that secretion have 

If you don’t have pride yourself.

Yasushi Ikeda

Flood

Flood gulps the town.

All the postboxes sink.

Water pours in all of them and open all the envelopes,

Letters leave the paper and begin to swim.

People get on boats and try to fish,

But cannot catch any.

What on earth is this flood?

Blue sky's piss.

Aphasia of the town continues for three weeks.

People watch the water trying to read something,

But words swim too fast to apprehend,

And disappear before they make sense.

Some properly think drinking is listening to words,

Others wrongly believe to write is to wound the water,

All wondering if it is morning or noon or night,

The town is sleepy with time delayed and lost.

For awakening,

I jump from the balcony into the water

To post a new letter in the postbox.

Yasushi Ikeda

---ESSAY---

Air and insects

I'm now reading books about animals for the preparation of the planned special pages of the summer issue of our poetry magazine "Mi-lyre-n". One of them is "Alien Worlds: How insects conquered the earth and why their fate will determine our future" written by Steve Nicholls (via the Japanese translation by Remi Kumagai). The hugeness of 600 pages of this book testifies how large, unimaginable, complicated and mysterious insects' world is. 

One big wonder concerning insects is that they can fly. They acquired wings long before birds did. Miracle. Insects were the first to proceed in the air, and since then they have subtly developed and elaborated their wing mechanism. According to this book, the air is somewhat like water for small insects. Possibly they fly as if they swim and climb in the air. But imagine the first insect that came upon the idea of flight. Maybe it moved some parts of its body and felt the possibility of the air. Genius! 

Poetry also flies in our imaginative space. Air for insects is silence for poems. Not vacuum silence but dreamy, dense liquid silence, I fancy.

Our genuine precious inspiration is the first unidentified flying insect some hundred million years ago.

Yuko Minamikawa Adams

Giacometti in a Fridge

 

10 a.m.

the door is opened.

I step into the gallery.

I feel the air of fridge –

immaculate, intact.

Figures are standing

in this clear atmosphere.

They are thin, almost

emaciated

but still solid

like trees.

I stare at these people,

wondering

how they could cope with this chill

and silence

after visitors disappeared

last evening

and how they could wait

until this morning

when our body temperature

reheats

their space.

Turfalko

The veins of the journey

The veins of the journey

unravel into multiple

furrows

and our expectations kindle

beneath contrary forces

we are the stars

of a thousand branches

frail cracks

fractures

with golden glints

our marks

and our marblings

mineral

darkened by words

sentences

sketches

traces of time

calligrams

of our weaknesses

flaws and imperfections

thus

we write ourselves

Turfalko

Mists of dreams

Mists of dreams

or mists of heat

silence awakens us

through the shutters

mashrabiya

of shadows and light

on your skin

figures

of desire

glyphs

of our ardent wishes

carved into the body

a caress awakens our senses

a blackbird's song in the distance

and the wind in a soft whistling

carries to us the discreet delights

and the secret coolness of the palm grove

NIJO Cenka

Vacuum Voice

In the vacuum of space,

there is no need to read the air.

If each of us carries our own oxygen tank,

breathing is easier

than it is on Earth.

But in the vacuum,

sound does not carry.

No matter how much the vocal cords tremble,

if there is no atmosphere to transmit that vibration,

a voice is powerless.

If so-

how can I call out

to your distant back, carrying your own tank?

That’s it-

transmit a signal

converted from this trembling.

　*read the air : from Japanese “kuki o yomu” (空気を読む), meaning to sense unspoken social cues.

Tim Taylor

Breath

It is almost nothing:

invisible, except when frigid air

or cold, smooth glass

transforms its moisture into mist;

its sound too faint to hear

unless the body needs more of it

than the lungs can claim.

It has no taste, no smell:

whatever chance aromas it may wear

are not its own. We feel 

only a passing breeze across the lips,

a rhythmic swelling 

and contraction of the chest,

so gentle, so familiar we forget

that it is happening. How strange 

that our entire life depends

upon a thing so insubstantial

that we might suppose 

it wasn’t there at all. 

Yasushi Ikeda

Stage

The darkest shadow has an air of ghost

He believes he was a king

He claims he was assassinated

He wants his son to be a detective

His son has an air of ghost

He questions whether to be or to go

He acts as a detective 

He laughs at his girlfriend and kills her father

She has an air of ghost

She likes to sing in a river

She dreams of living in a convent 

He and she have an air of ghost

Whoever understands them has an air of ghost

This pale cool air is a funny fragile fragrance 

Of utterly immature actors on this cosmic stage.

Yuko Minamikawa Adams

Eiffel Tower

I’m weaving an Eiffel Tower

like weaving a fishing net.

It’ll be as tall as me.

The string is made of cotton

and it’ll not stand up.

When it’s completed

it’ll lie flat on a floor.

I may sometimes wish

it could rise into the sky.

When I feel that way

I will put on my tower

and stand up

in my invisible room.