New Selected Poems
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About this ebook
Shuntaro Tanikawa
Shuntaro Tanikawa’s sixty-odd collections of poems have received awards in England, China, Japan and the United States, including the 1988 American Book Award. He translated the Mother Goose Rhymes and, for several decades, the celebrated comic strip Peanuts. Having read at festivals on three continents and in numerous countries, Tanikawa has achieved a reputation as not only one of the most popular but also one of the most inventive Japanese poets of the modern age.
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New Selected Poems - Shuntaro Tanikawa
2015.
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