photo : susanna hsing Three Poems by Kiriu Minashita Rhythm Lucretius’s atomic rain falls gradually above daily congestion, wetting my earlobes with noise. I’ve swallowed the good parts of several drops sleepy dissonance. On one side, the trembling world, a forest of umbrellas. Beyond dreams of homeostatic noise and air compressors, a serene garden of flowers. Little dog with a rising bark. Little woman smacking it. Little pellets of rain that stain into my hair Little courtyard of an elementary school Little voices humming If you listen closely to those voices’ noises, there’s vivid rhythm. Poison is stirred into your s-igh. Several bags of air float at the street corner. Then, the traffic signal rottens with each breath. What is here is only red rust, and ev· ery· one gets a· long. I sever today’s date that falls toward heaven from the spaces between the stones WORLDLIT.ORG 45 that give sound to the sighing of my feet. Soon, the day becomes dark tidying up a snug line of ice-contrails. When you call, I’m at the base of the Universal Building in Nakano where I build a mountain range in the exaggerated spaces of required etiquette. I look up. Right in the middle of a bright frozen darkness the greedy overflowing sun laughs at me, straining my ears, amazed. Humid in Tokyo The first and last stops on the Chuo Line are the beginning and ending of a story I completely miss while napping. Furious freezing rain angles up from the ground, cutting wires and cinder blocks diagonally. The gap between buildings zoned for ma· xi· mum per-floor den· si· ty is bathed in metal blessings. From the cloud-seam, instead of sky, I see words in musical intervals. A street vendor says the painters who fill the Void have finished their installation. The vendor whispers, a hexagonal color wheel in one hand. In the agora in front of the convenience store, the conveniently un· em· ployed assemble drink eat smoke trash smile. Happy to oblige the om· in· ous yel· low sign· board: In· ten· ded For Com· mer· cial Use smile. That guy living in a cardboard box must be wri· ting some kind of un· seen poem, you say, smile. The world is sunny. Frozen and sunny, the sun trembling and rattling. Pleasantly sunny while trembling. In a sunny spot on a sunny afternoon, weddings, death notices, to· night’s ap· pe· ti· zers are lined up neatly, then tossed. The end-of-the-world catastrophe keeps coming gently. Every time I step into a hole in the road, I see the setting sun of the world. Still, I can’t tell if I’m seeing things, or hear· ing things? Right away, a change of key— today, the beat correlated to my pulse in 6/8 time. I hear voices— Tokyo Humidity for Sale, sing the vendors, in perfect pitch. Festival of Water My view is blocked by ice driz· zle rising from asphalt. The lines of (what should be) earth are endless, twis· ted up. At the feast (intra festum) 46 WLT MARCH–APRIL 2017 cover feature dystopian visions WORLDLIT.ORG 47 we keep quivering with the sun’s rays like growing plants. Pascal’s human misery, on a personal day. For example: the way a hunger artist disregards the round dance of life*— At the heart of its roar, the world is always sparkling in the stillness before the end. Flood the stores of de· sic· ca· ted days, draw the boundary once more. You leave behind a wet trail lit by sunshine. If I look the world is glaring, stretching and elongating. In the end, the world is expanding: wave of heat, smokescreen of water. But I’m interrupted by the shadow of a giant question mark falling straight down. Will the day end in a feast of broad daylight? Or will it sink into spray? (How biz· zare) right before my eyes, I see wetness that didn’t fall as rain. Not the water of the rain that strews the road with sorrow. But you, left behind. Translations from the Japanese By Eric E. Hyett...
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Sep 8, 2024
Lingfeng Xu + 3
Open Access
