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every morning after killing thousands of angles
The Russian poet Anderi Voznesensky gave the idea a late twentieth-century spin when he referred to a poem as
"a crystal,a method of thought penetrating to the essence
of what happening, a way of revealing the truth.Poetry
knows no borders;it has no capitals and no provinces.
Languages are many but poetry is one."
The following (japanese)poem is the one I can understand what Anderi said from "the vintage book of contemporary world poetry".I'm not sure how the original japanese poem sounds like but I'm so sure I feel down the translated version of this poem.
Every morning after killing thousands of angles
1
i read a boy's poem called "Every morning after killing thousands of angles"
i forget the poem,but the title won't leave me
i drink some coffee
read a paper read by millions
all the misery
all the destruction in the world
herd into headlines and catch phrases
the only part i trust
is the financial page
a completely blank sapce governed
by the mechanics of capital and pure speculation
2
that boy's mornings
and my mornings-
how are they different?
3
But the boy can see the angles' faces
4
what do you do
after you kill them?
i go out walking
Where?
To a river with a very big bridge over it
Every morning?
Every morning
while my hands are still bloody
5
I can't kill thousands of angles
but I walk a dry path to the beach
the hot sky's still filled
with sweating typhoon clouds
the sea's a later color
fall is not summer at the horizon
narrow streams run through
spaces silted with darkness
weak-looking capillaries float on my thin hands:
no place to anchor a big bridge
6
Noon at this end of the bridge
everythings shines
shirt buttons
decayed tooth
an air rifle
broken
sunglass lens
pink shells
smells of seaweed
river water mixing with the sea
sand
and
as far
as my footprints
7
It's my turn now
I'll tell you about the world
at the far end of the bridge
the shadow world
things and concepts totally shadow
shadows feeding on shadows
spreading,radiating like cancer cells
decomposing organs of drowned bodies
green thought swelling and distending
medieval markets surging with marchants and prostitutes and
monks
cats,sheep,hogs,horses,cows
every kind of meat on butcher shop hooks
but no blood anywhere
8
So I can't see the bridge
unless I kill thousands of angles?
9
What sight excites me most sexually?
the bridge has disappeared
a riderless black horse
crosses the word of light
slowly,toward the shadow world
but exhausted,it falls
crying animal tears but not rotting
gleaming directly to bone
pure white bone
and then to earth
and then
dawn comes I've got to go out and live
after killing
killing thousands of angles
RYUICHI TAMURA
translaed from the Japanese by Christopher Drake