Your translations arrive this evening
like the home and hearth
of a dear friend I would visit.

I run my hand over the flames
of characters on the cover.
The smell of roast lamb
through the open doorway
bids me, enter.

Slowly I turn pages.
The warm light glows
above the hot coals.

I read a line or two.
Here and there, the tea beside
a plate of fish and greens
swirls in my cup.

words like fresh baked trout
are scooped up in meters
of steamed rice.

Figures on lacquered bowls
dance by in flowered kimono.
The evening wears on,
sake spreads through
_________________ my veins.

We converse late into the night,
sitting by the hearth, stirring
the coals now and again
______________ in the dark.

The bottle is finally drained.
With the first morning light
I bid my host farewell.

The long journey home
is filled with sadness
and the sight of cranes
_____ rising from the lake.


||

On the front step a dead bird
eyes the sky

now, with morning
the excuse of light
turns me
_____________ from the dark print
_____________ of the newspaper.

you must read the bird
he says, I will like to know

the embrace of death does not translate so well.
We no longer know if it should be placed before or after

We eat our hiroshima's a little at a time,
the smallest sliver echoes in blood__ a redevelopment project
sinking beneath the horizon

the newspaper is one____ cranes rising from the skyline
wonder at what our original language supplies.

On the cover there is a four-pain window
(we will not be able to translate that,
_________________ homonyms are all alike

screaming, (screaming, screaming)
burnt flesh, too, has the smell of baked fish
over time, the flowers will excuse the rain.

A great golden smile presses against the window
leaves me at a loss as to whether death or deafness
has intervened.

There is a man (he has a tail and a penis) and a woman
with a foot like a pin-prick, and a tear - how apt
we should close in on tu like this, that easterner
has put ideas

__________________________ in my head.


Next to that, a whole village, or maybe a samurai with a flag,
his conical hat at a jaunty angle. No matter. the flames

the flags are just an excuse. The soldier has no thought
for the woman; he fires arrows at two other complex figures.

I will wrap the paper in bird

to dwell in those villages - whole complexes are dressed
for the purification of war______ in a flash it will be over

sometime in the night,
my cup drops from my hand
I wake to the smell of brittle air
one red eye opens where a shard has penetrated.

The characters on the cover
gaily wave and celebrate.
When I understand why,
I will open my other eye.


|||

No One____ one____ on e___ one___ one

No One____ one____ one____ on e__ one

echoes at the edge of the first page like a siren spinning on its axis
should alarm us

there is already something bottomless
in reflections that will grow louder
as they diminish

the spirit within the thing within the name
is too delicate to bring to the surface;
it moves towards a margin without wings.

Something is ominous in the extra space____ a_ fractured thought
we have been warned early there will be gaps_________ traces of
the unsayable_______ like the palimpsest of the executioner

only_ the translator can guide us precisely when, at last,
we are severed from ourselves;

where we
fall from a great height
where we
will be crushed by__ dense sentences
where we
will be listed into oblivions we did not anticipate

where the angel cannot liberate the image
from the images within - the sky, the bird, the scream -
only a handful of soil is carried across the sea

we will need to go far from the safety
of understanding if we wish to resurrect
unbroken light from the archeology of dream,
our shovels
will strike darkness.

we hear the prophecy of silence
we taste the prophecy of grass
we think there is prophecy in our words
we are deluded souls, we think we are plunging.

We must go further, much further
with this fist of dirt. On a good day
our translator is, Sam is, the image
of a really lanky Will Rogers Sr.
on a good day.

4.

This man from Kansas sits large and to the side
Ryuichi, Yumiko and Mrs. Estuko Tamura
are centered and a little to the back in separate tableau,
The camera keeps its distance, a plant in a foil pot intervenes

a low table intervenes. We know that Tamura was too tall
for the cockpit of suicide planes. He would first think of
getting his teeth fixed and new clothes __ a brief
moment later he would view the naked soil of Arechi

Sam says it was the years of falling through the silence.
The brutality and censorship that grew, poisoned and
wrecked the souls of men who thought god had made the sky.

After that, we are native plants rooting in foreign soil.
After that, we are chin wa, dissolved in water.
After that, we are serial killers disguised in art. After that,

the left-hand column is full of villages running in every direction;
two-pained windows scream and figures rush past with streaming hair
in dark print. There are no flames, just piles of untranslatable ash

______________________________ Shishu
bird____________________ bird:ground :: stone:sky
--------- [untr. utterance]____ ----------------------------
ground_____________________ Ryuichi :: Noguchi

______________________________ Shishu

In his own hand
The 4 panes variously appear as sailboats tacking in the wind.
The man and the woman are unmistakable.
The samurai holding the flag is:

closely inspecting something.
confronted by clouds and rain.
shown proper respect.
holding amiable discourse (or var. has seen a pretty woman.)
is in mortal combat (or var. getting it on.)
paying homage to the bird.

The samurai is var. caduceus, caducous

No man writes himself the same way twice.
our own ends do not mean anything.

Red Slider



In recent work, Red Slider has devoted some attention to expressing in poem the life and artistry of other great artists. A major multi-verse work on the life and art of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi is to be presented in Michael Rothenberg's 'BigBridge' ezine this coming December.

Readers are encouraged to check into the "Poetry of Ryuichi Tamura", Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura, trs. (CCC Books,Palo Alto, 1998). Japanese Characters read 'Tamura Ryuichi Shishu' (Poetry of Ryuichi Tamura) and are provided with the permission of the translator.