Listen, you
who transformed your anguish
into healthy awareness,
put your voice
where your memory is.
You who swallowed
the afternoon dust,
defend everything you understand
with words.
You, if no one else,
will condemn with your tongue
the erosion each disappointment brings.
of the furious
Who take Today and jerk it out of joint
have made new underpinnings and a Head.
Blacktime is time for chimeful
poemhood
but they decree a
jagged chiming now.
If there are flowers flowers
must come out to the road. Rowdy! —
knowing where wheels and people are,
knowing where whips and screams are,
knowing where deaths are, where the kind kills are.
Your idea of embracing horror
was overwhelmed by the horror:
It’ s too cold to smoke outside, but if you come over,
I’ ll keep my hands to myself, or won’ t I.
I would like to tell you about the wall eaten up
by the climbing plant — it was so beautiful.
Various things have been happening to me,
all of them sexual. The man on the bus
took off his pants so I could see him better.
Another man said, “Ignore him darlin’.
Just sit on my lap.” But I’ m not one of those
who’ s hungriest in the morning,
unlike the man at the bakery
who eats egg after egg after egg.
Is it a weightless pistol —
your hand.
The tail of smoke
like a limitless conversation
risks blooming and death.
The head of a desert.
A blank crawls parallel to lines of combed hair.
A barometer pursued its dream
without even blinking.
A released piglet
pricked up its rose petal ears
and vanished like a star.
Everyone
waits for everyone
on an unknown
but familiar
infinite chessboard.
Translated from the Japanese
