Kazuko Shiraishi

translated, from the Japanese, by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura

Even a Phantom Gets Thirsty

I asked what can you do   while you're alive
a donkey doesn't have ears   doesn't have a mouth
eyes with long lashes over them like umbrellas
holding up philosophy   philosophy doesn't take any responsibility
for debt or unhappiness

people despair   get depressed   but
what can they see   when they so indolently desperately head toward a hole and
	      darkness
look at the braying donkey   a donkey doesn't
fall or anything   get blindfolded all the time
she can see quite well in the dark    can hear well
with no disability   twirls round and round
like a merry-go-round
I wonder if suffering   looks like the slobber of joy sometimes   around that time
people get fed up with despair   in despair
go to the other side   other side   there

people who come to pray   in front of a guardian god and receive
the precious tears of the donkey   never stop coming
Minoru Yoshioka1    appeared    from time to time
to eat a bowl of shaved ice with sweet beans
even a phantom gets thirsty

phantoms    appear all over the place
the peak of Mt. Yamamotoyama in Ojiya2 in deep fog
is no different from the London suburbs
he chanted    like a spell    the same English as at the time
	      he walked through the Kew Gardens
when the pronunciation stopped short    the fog cleared up

while eating a bowl of soba noodles    the donkey    kept a journal this far
	      we don't know what will become of   tomorrow
nevertheless   there is also something I have understood
even a phantom gets thirsty.

1. Minoru Yoshioka is a close friend of Shiraishi, whom she considers the greatest of Japan's surrealist poets. It is a Buddhist custom to make an offering to the dead of a token of his favorite food.
2. The modernist poet Junzaburo Nishiwaki's home was in Ojiya, Niigata Prefecture, near the Mt. Yamamotoyama. He had studied in England as a young man and was familiar with Kew Garden.

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Kazuko Shiraishi is one of Japan's leading poets, and has won all the major literary awards the country has to offer. She has published over twenty volumes of poetry. Her work first appeared in English translation in Kenneth Rexroth's collection Seasons of Sacred Lust (New Directions, 1975). Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura translated Shiraishi's Let Those Who Appear (New Directions, 2002). They are currently assembling another collection that includes her most recent work. contents | previous