Ishikawa - Japanese Poetry

Terror of Summer in the City


Under the scorching summer's sun,
The soul of the rail glitters in fright.
A chubby lad of three slides off
The lap of a drowsing mother,
And toddles toward the tram-car tracks.

Withered vegetables in the window of a green-grocer:
Limp and motionless curtains of a hospital window.
Under the closed iron gate of a kindergarten,
A white dog with long ears stretches in his sleep.
In all the boundless immensity of light,
Somewhere, petals of poppies fall dead,
And weary is the summer air that cracks
A coffin of unseasoned wood.

As the ailing wife of an iceman
Walks out of the gate with a bucket
And puts up a broken sunshade,
From a boarding house in the alley
Comes a silent funeral procession.
Noticing it, a policeman at the corner stifles a yawn
And the white dog, stretching himself to his heart's content,
Walks behind a garbage can.

Under the scorching summer's sun,
The soul of the rail glitters in fright.
A chubby lad of three slides off
The lap of a drowsing mother,
And toddles toward the tram-car tracks.


trns. by Hirosi Saito 


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