木下夕爾 (きのした‐ゆうじ) Kinoshita Yūji (1914 - 1965)

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ソワレエ I 罠にかかった獣のように II *

SOIRÉE I Like a beast caught in a trap, Evening stalked up to the doorstep, and Delivering loose bits of straw amounts of light, Sat down. There. A straw-colored moon comes up. The boys Bite into the corn-on-the-cobs as if To play harmonica And they run out to the shiso*1 fields. II The eve comes and casts out a net To retrieve the children out playing. The air is faint with ether's sweet scent. In the tree-shade, I sit on a rock, or, it may be An alabaster egg that summer's been brooding All around, the cool hours come to a standstill. Like timorous livestock, I took To the direction that the sap runs -- I widen my ears. A distant swamp glistens like magnesium.. *1 The pungent shiso leaf (perilla) is probably fairly well known these days, since it is used in sushi and other dishes. It comes in both green and red/purple varieties. The flower stalks and seeds are used as well. (⇒)

田舎の理髪店で 1

AT THE BARBER'S, IN THE COUNTRY dedicated to Isamu Yoshii in jest, on a trip to Amakusa. The boyhood chum of mine had a soapy scent about him. It must be that besides the soap smell, something else, day-to-day livelihood had soaked into him, young as he was. The shimmering reflections off th waters Under the wooden bridge, these are stagnant waters. And his face, an old brawling-scar on his chin. The travails of a man who has returned stapped for cash. Yet these troubles are shaven clean away by the skilled hand, who Goes on and on about th wateerlogged cadaver that came up putrid. Ah, the inside of my eyelids stir. The wooden bridge same as the olden days. The stagnant water runs, and twenty years' time flows. Like singled-out wrath. 1 (⇒)

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伐採[?] 1	LOGGING A chopping ax is heard.. its echo heard.. The neatly stacked layers rattled.. conveying with bodily gestures, the sorrows of the trees.. From the severed ends of tree limbs.. the sap seeps out and glistens like tears.. in the light that sifts down on the tee boughs. * The ax buried deep.. won't budge for quite some time. For the tree grabs on tight. . As if to conceal the gashes marring its sides. * A summer afternoon. I dozed in the tree's shade, And read.. and was immersed in foolish fancies.. Today.. like the disquiet of waters, I feel the shadows cast over me when trees tip over. Whistle loud now, ax. I command you. Chop and quickly fell these trees and these tiresome long summer days. 1 (⇒)
日御碕	CAPE OF HINOMISAKI Ducking through the humming pines*1, The mulberry orhard expand before me. The fishing village, visible, asleep in the shade of leaves. Here at the edge of Izumo-no-kuni*2, What brightness, to the waters and skies. On a short trip in the afternoon, Tiring of the roar of the rough seas, My thoughts turned suddenly to death. When will it be to feel again the red clay earth beneath me? I left my home with no particular plan, Led only by my yearning for what lies far yonder When will they vanish, these memories? By the June sunlight, I worshipfully gaze. The lighthouse there stands, dragging a long coattail, While an army of ants attack the ripening mulberries. *1 The archaic/poetic word shorai refers to the wind through the pine grove or the whistiling sound made by it. shō is the Chinese reading of matsu "pine", and rai is glossed as a three-holed flute. *1 Izumo is the old name for what is the Eastern part of Shimane Prefecture today. The Hiromisaki cape and lighthouse (in the title) is located here. (⇒)
火の記憶 ─広島原爆忌にあたり とある家の垣根で[?] 蔓草がどんなにやさしい手をのばしても あの雲をつかまえることはできない 遠いのだ。あんなに手近にうかびながら とある木の梢の 終わりの蝉がどんなに小さく鳴いていても すぐそれがわきかえるような激しさに変わる 鳴きやめたものがいっせいに目をさますのだ 町の曲がり角で 田舎みちの踏み切りで 私は立ち止まって自分の影を踏む 太陽がどんなに遠くへ去っても あの日石畳に刻みつげられた影が消えてしまっても 私はなお強く 濃く　熱く 今在るものの影を踏みしめる	RECOLLECTION OF FIRE -- on the occassion of Hiroshima's A-bombing Anniversary From that certain home's hedges, No matter how far the gentle vine reaches It cannot reach the clouds, Though they seem to come awful close. From that certain tree-bought, No matter how softly the cicada starts out singing, Soon everything turns to raucus, Because the nes that were pausing are aroused all at once. On the street-corner, At the country road's railroad crossing, I stopped in my shadow. No matter how distant the sun, or what's become Of the silhouettes branded into the stone steps, I will go on strong.. and filled with passion. Stamping down on the shadows of things that are now. 1 (⇒)
同じ空の下で[?]　 (ルポルタージュ詩) 有刺鉄線に囲まれて、原爆ドームに朝の影を川波の上によこたえる.. 1	UNDER THE SAME SKY　 (reportage poem) The A-bomb memorial dome, surrounded by barbed wire, lays down its morining shadow on the river's ripples. On the spiral staircase casting its shadow on the summer grass, there can be seen a footprint that belonged to someone who ran up that day. the hollow windows are like eyes, ever staring out. Many sparrows nest here. We debated. Aren't those doves up there building nests? But in the ruins that we have here, sparrows may be more apt. Chirpingly they fly, to and fro. Straws ahang out from the nests, and bird terd glisten on the crumbling walls. At S____ Bank, the myriads struck dead on the stone steps are no more. Low iron hedges encircle that spot. The ten years did the eroding. No, the visitors were the ones, who removed them, one by one. By trampling onto the shadows. Over the scorched sidewalk, I too, look to the shadows and walk over them. Shadows which, who knows when and where, we ourselves may be branded into the shape of [some day]. (⇒) 1
花の幻　 原民喜 の詩 「遠き日 の石に刻み／砂に影おち／崩れ墜つ／天地のまなか／一輪の花の幻」 .. 1	MIRAGE OF A FLOWER Between the weeds of the castle ruins, a child's straw hat and his butterfly net comes in and out of hiding. Around where it once used to echo with commands and bayonets rattling, there's now just the weeds grown over. The monument inscribed with Hara Tamiki's poem stand there too. We sit in the stewing smell of grass beside the monument stone: "Engraved in stone, / A day long gone. / Its shadow [now] falling on sand, / Amid the crumbling heaven and earth, / the mirage of a stem of flower." (⇒) 1
原爆乙女[?] (⇒) 1	A-BOMB MAIDEN　 The heat within the confines of concrete unleashes its humidity upon us. She can feel it on her cheeks, Miss H., the A-bomb maiden. The rosy sunset through the hospital's window tinges the keloid scars on her cheeks and arms. It makes her consciencious when she lays on the thick rouge on her cheeks, she says. For hiding her scars, white lace gloves were all she had. In August's burning rays of sun, there appear out of their homes the lace-covered faces and arms, hundreds, even thousands in all. "I was writing summer-greetings to a few friends from work. Most of them are at home trying to recover. I have half the blood of others, and more kept seeping out of my nose. All this time, I have had to swallow blood nightly." But Miss H. continues: "For the day which is to come, or rather, for the day which must come, I'm going to hang on. And I will pray." The cannas planted in the hospital's flowerbed are scarlet, as are the fiery memory of ten years. And the promises sought from the names on the ballots, bloodlet each time, they come to nothing. The vesper bells are ringing at the nearby Peace Memorial. Not for God only, and least of all for the cheek rouge and loaced gloves, but for the good day which shall come to enwrap the memories and scars and all, for that we pray. 1