T A K A R A B E   T O R I K O
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EIGHT POEMS

 

Translated by Hiroaki Sato

 

Rhetorical Dog

 

From the end of the wasteland a wind runs toward me like a wild dog,

I wrote, and thought that there was something I didn't like about “like a wild dog.”

That must have been because it was a useless modification.

Over the wasteland in the darkness before daybreak something that I can't tell is a wind or a
      
      wild dog runs toward me.

That is the way I turned my first sighting into words.

The fact was, from the end of the wasteland a wild dog ran toward me like a wind.

That is, several starving wild dogs as one solid mass ran toward me.

 

Winds smell like a hairy beast.

 

Winds have unidentifiable hair streaming from them.

 

Winds ferociously collide against one another.

 

Winds whirl around a newborn, growling low.

 

Winds run taking what is sweet and soft.

 

Because the day hadn't broken yet,

the dogs even looked like a whirlwind.

Let's say the corpses of refugees you haven't been able to take away are lying there.

Will wind be more “poetic” than dog?

Will it give more sense of self-salvation?

In the end the newborn will be eaten by wild dogs.

Even if there is that reality,

I don't want to make a distinction between wind and wild dog.

Why, both run with their hair streaming from them, don't they?

 

 

 

n e x t

 

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