Poems of Masayo Koike, Shuntaro Tanikawa & Rin Ishigaki

Poems of Masayo Koike, Shuntaro¯ Tanikawa & Rin Ishigaki
Asia Pacific Poetry Series 1

Published by Vagabond Press
PO Box 958 Newtown NSW 2042 Australia
www.vagabondpress.net
First edition, 2013.
Transnational edition, 2014.

English texts © Leith Morton, 2006 & 2013.
Introduction © Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, 2013.
Cover image © Ikumi Nakaya, 2012
色を失った街/The city of lost color, lithograph, 51.4×72.6cm, ed.6.
http://ikumi.jimdo.com

Designed and typeset by Michael Brennan
in 10/12 Bembo

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the
publisher. The information and views set out in this book are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-922181-52-7 

Poems of
Masayo Koike, Shuntaro¯
Tanikawa & Rin Ishigaki

Translated from Japanese by
Leith Morton
With an introduction by
Yasuhiro Yotsumoto

Vagabond Press|Asia Pacific Poetry Series

Contents

Translator’s Preface by Leith Morton .... 7
Introduction byYasuhiroYotsumoto .... 11

Masayo Koike
The End of the Journey .... 18
The Ashtray and the Girl .... 20
Hakozaki on Deep Blue .... 22
Her Words Return .... 26
Rainman .... 28
Men .... 30
Falling Star .... 31
Water Vein I .... 32
Water Vein II .... 33
Water Vein III .... 34
Water Vein IV .... 35
A Short Poem about Daybreak .... 36
Bathhouse .... 37
Invisible Connections I .... 38
Invisible Connections II .... 39
Invisible Connections III .... 40
Invisible Connections IV .... 41
Penis from Heaven .... 42
Alley .... 45
Antelope .... 46
An Elegy .... 47
Unsold Goods .... 48

Shuntaro¯ Tanikawa
The Map of a Man .... 51
Sea .... 52
Five Emotions .... 53

4

Broad-Axe .... 55
Shaping Sand .... 56
Mmm .... 58
The Chagall and Leaf .... 60
Pansy .... 61
Here New .... 62
This Now .... 63
My Father’s Death .... 64
Poem .... 68
Blue .... 69
Toba 1 .... 70
Toba 10 .... 71
The Pure Land .... 72
Sweet Bean Bun .... 73
Silence .... 74
Peeing .... 75
Light .... 76
The Word Is .... 77
Journey 1 .... 78
Endurance .... 79
In Short,You .... 80
A Gentle Breeze, Graveyard, Dulcimer .... 81
Persisting with An Apple .... 82

Rin Ishigaki
Poverty .... 85
Motherland .... 86
In Front of Me the Pot and Ricepot
and Burning Flames .... 88
Roof .... 90
Clams .... 92
Island .... 93
Moving On .... 94

5

Living .... 95
Cliff .... 96
At the Bathhouse .... 97
Mandatory Retirement .... 98
Words .... 99
Souvenir .... 100
The Economy .... 101
Plucking Flowers .... 102
Motherscape .... 104
A Secret .... 105
When the Sun Rises on New Year’s Day .... 106
Who sees it? .... 108
Sadness .... 109
Downhill .... 110
Notes .... 112 

6

Masayo Koike

The End of the Journey

When we returned from the trip
His
Face indicated that something had ended
The trip had
Indisputably ended
The journey’s end encroached on
Numerous other things that
Seemed to be approaching numerous endings
Let’s go on another trip,
Let’s come back to Italy again,
Chatting at the end of the journey
Somewhere deep deep within us
Something had already ended between us
For sometime afterwards we remained within the ending but
One day suddenly he began to talk
I think we should separate
At these words
For the first time a feeling that something was amiss grew in me
Yet for a long long time
I too lived within the ending
An ending at the time that
When I ended it
I felt
That there ought be a new beginning
Between him and me
Being eaten away by our ending
Even things around us one by one crumbled
The oven telephone fridge printer
Glasses all broke, even the window pane broke
The ending of everything continued

18

Almost new, refreshing
All the endings
Fell around me and collected like snow

19

The Ashtray and the Girl

The girl who takes a dose of youthful souls
Who doesn’t bow is still effective

The end of summer
In the middle of the road
Lying on its back dead a Brown Baker cicada

In the aunt’s folded fan
Jammed within this year’s butterfly is dead

In the tobacconist at the bottom of the slope
Not moving an inch the perpetual shop assistant

Children gleam
Fish or skylarks
Sped off in the direction of the sea-tang

In the forlorn, tiny universe dog dung remains

The power of green binds the window
All the trees silently burst into flame
Z, zzz, zzzz
Buzzing green

Afternoon in the locked music room
A strange chord can be heard

On top of the piano
The ashtray and the girl
Matches and a bundle of small candles

20

‘Take off your socks’
‘Keep your skirt on’
The girl’s legs are slowly opened
In the inlet giddy students in the grade above
Looking from afar another girl
This summer
Binds all their pasts together
Travelling behind them
From tomorrow all will begin their ending

21

Shuntaro¯ Tanikawa 

The Map of a Man

Inside me is a vegetable patch. Inside me is an old hut,
inside that rests a plough. Inside me is a woman, beside
her is a faithful dog. Inside me are imprisoned many
crows, the flapping of their wings awakens me in the night.
Inside me is a small boy. A yet unborn boy.
He is silent. Silent and curled into a ball.
Inside me is filled with the liquid of time. It’s white and
smells good, viscid like chaos.
The buds of time find it difficult to crystallize.
Inside me are seeds. All the seeds.
Inside me is a harvest wastefully harvested day after day.
Countless evening suns.
Inside me is a pillar of dreams.

51

Five Emotions

Regret

If only I had done that instead . . .
Only because of the existence of that worthless subjunctive

mood
I try to erase the past with words but
At the beach with not a soul in sight
Even if I close my eyes it does not go away
To at least try to regret my actions successfully
I take the past as a bitter lesson and dream of the future which
Itself betrays your fragile precious
Loveliness that day
The repetition of the waves teaches me
Nothing ever truly repeats itself
If I were mute like a wild animal
Howling innocently I might be able to endure
This lonely expanse ahead

Shame

You are ashamed because though you try
To conceal it you cannot
It was the trembling centre of your life
That you tried to conceal
When it meets other glances from that place
You begin to dissolve
So tender, so helpless is the core of your heart
No matter how much we love each other
We cannot share that

52

From the time you stopped concealing it
It closed, turned to stone
The roads leading to the starry heavens from the depths of

your downcast eyes
Has become totally obstructed by
Coarser fragments of anger and sorrow

Scorn

In your unwavering gaze there appears a
Constant indistinct shifting which perplexes me
I would not believe it
The named emotion simply conceals an unnamable

emotion
Deep within its core
But it does not turn into words
Directly radiating from your eyes your lips
It wounds me
I search within myself
For the reason for that sharpness within you but
Even the courage for that I lose
Like a lump of earth beneath the blue sky
I slowly crumble unable to move

Jealousy

I wish I could become a king
And rule far and wide over the territory called you
Even down to all the streams and to every nook and

cranny but
Actually I don’t have a simple map

53

When I think I’m walking along a road I’ve walked many times
I suddenly come across a beautiful meadow I’ve never seen

before
I stand rooted to the spot as if frozen
And secretly wish in my heart that it be a desert instead
I may lose my way in your forest
In due course I may well die in the gutter yet
Your elegy sung for a person like the creature that I am
I want no other to hear

Compassion

Who can speak accurately
Of quite mundane matters
Like the feeling that overflows inside you
While watching children play
It is not something that wells up from within you but
It envelops you from outside like a single cosmos
The leaf bathed in autumn sunlight
Quickly decays and is forgotten yet
Today it touches our eyes hands and heart
It must be so
Embraced by something infinite like the blue sky
We wordless infants are
Permitted only to hold out our two powerless hands
To all living things

54

Rin Ishigaki
 

Poverty

When I grumble
My father says,
‘Put up with me a little longer
It will soon be over for me’
Just as if it’s some business to be attended to.

It does not comfort me—

It’s blackmail
So I get angry, but
Last year my grandfather died
What remained was a space the size of a single mat,
Which is extremely valuable in a house this small.
Weeping I stood in the funeral procession
My family and friends
Said to comfort me
‘Now your burden will be lighter’,
These were their words of farewell
For my grandfather who loved me more than anyone else.
Then a year later
My father lying paralyzed on one side (same as grandfather)
Beside the pillow of my bed-ridden stepmother
Asked:
‘It won’t be much longer so please put up with us a little

more,’
When the day comes that my father who is still alive
Is replaced by this intolerable memory
I will no longer be able to escape
From these memories.

85

Motherland

This summer I went to Kamiko¯chi,

The towering mountains were huge
I was small
The friend who went with me was also small
Everyone was so small
Any comparison was ludicrous.

The trail
Wound round the mountain like a single thread
Finer than a thread
It continued on ever more faintly,
I climbed up the trail

When I came to the summit
I had grown wonderfully big
As big as the mountain
Beneath my friend’s feet
The huge mountains went on and on.

The villages and towns were far-off
Indistinct and tiny,

The trail ascending the mountain was narrow but
Good enough for people to follow
If, on the trail I had just climbed
The authorities had placed a single guard
And erected a notice saying
‘No entry beyond this point...’

86

Nobody could have climbed one step

Upon that dark trail from the foot of the mountain

Through the striped bamboo-grass,

In the small place at the bottom of the mountain people

Face to face

Would have had to narrow-mindedly compete with each other,

For that reason they would have been deprived in body and

mind

They would have forgotten their own potentialities and

The vast sky

And life

With all its prospects

They would have become servile and unhappy.

The field of alpine flowers on the peak

Was shrouded in cloud and mist birds were there too

I believe that if people do not go there

No creature will

It was a quiet, lovely place.

If people don’t go there who will!
If even the people who live there don’t go there

I was overjoyed by there being no notice
On the trail I had just glanced back at
It was a mountain trail where nothing like a notice should be.

On the mountain top

Where nothing like that should exist

I yelled out without knowing why,

If someone erects a notice here

I’ll tear it out

Unafraid

I’ll tear it out regardless of the cost!

87

In Front of Me the Pot and Ricepot and
Burning Flames

There have been for ages
Objects always placed
In front of us women,

A pot of sufficient size
To match our strength and
A ricepot designed especially for fat
Simmering shiny rice and
In front of the glow from the fire that we have inherited

from the beginning of history
Were always our mothers and grandmothers and their

mothers also.

What amount of love and faithfulness
Did they pour into these objects?
At times it was red carrots
Black kelp
Diced fish

In the kitchen
There always occurred the correct preparations for

breakfast and lunch and dinner
Before the preparations there were always rows of
Warm hands and knees.

Ah were it not for these rows of people
How could the women have so cheerfully
Done the cooking time and time again?
This is the face of an indefatigable love

88

This is the face of service performed day after day so that
it becomes a matter of routine.

The mysterious irony that made cooking
The task of women
Was not ill-fortune I believe
Because of it learning and worldly status
May lag behind but
It is not too late
What is in front of us is
The pot and ricepot and burning flames and
In front of these beloved objects
Just like we cook meat and potatoes
With a deep love
Let us study politics and economics and literature.
Not for the sake of pride or worldly fame but
In order for these things
To be offered to all humanity
To work towards these things with humanity itself as the

object of our love.

89