Takamura Kōtarō, Translated by Eric Hoffman
To Someone
It is terrible
your departure—
It is like the fruit that grows before the flower,
like the buds that bloom before they seed,
like summer months that precede the spring.
It is an illogical, unnatural thing.
Please do not accept
a conventional husband
for whom you will draw round letters.
To think of this makes me weep. It is strange.
Timid as a little bird,
insensitive as a tempest,
how will you see fit to wed?
It is terrible
your departure—
Why is it so easy—
how shall I say,
to make your body a trinket for sale?
You remove yourself
from the world of many thousands
and sell yourself to one person.
Lost to one man
you are lost senselessly.
What a travesty,
like Titian’s paintings sold
in Tsurumaki-chō.
I am lonely and I am sad
and I do not know what to say or do.
That gloxinia you gave me? I watch it rot.
I, too, abandoned, rot.
A bird travels through a bit of sky,
waves crash on the shore, orphaned by the sea.
For a moment, I burn, alone
—Yet this is a different love
Santa Maria
It is different It is different.
I do not know what it is
yet I know that it is terrible,
your departure—
married, as well,
gifted to a stranger’s heart.
