☀ Today's Poem: Excerpt from "62 Sonnets" Shuntaro Tanikawa

1 Shade Tree

In any case, joy lives inside this day
as in the heart of the new sun—
and in dining tables, and in guns,
and even in gods, though they remain oblivious.

In the tree’s shade, human hearts return
to embrace the day’s humility.
Freely, in this place,
one stands for a moment

to read the sky,
to sing the clouds’ song,
to pray, simply because it is time to summon pleasure.

I must forget
that which is beyond forgetting.
The sun glares. The trees glare back.

2 Yearning

In the shadow of the June sun, I accept my fate.
I’ve become alienated even from my own desires.
My yearning dashes about
vainly, with no time to look back.

I’ve made the mistake of loving without conviction.
All the while, just this charming exterior—
flattery without the knowledge of who flatters.
Fields and clouds are such simple things.

Soon, around my small grave,
only people, rocks, and sky will remain. And yet—
what immortal soul remembers tomorrow?

I’ve made the mistake of forgetting the gods.
Without life, how on earth can anything happen?
In the obscure early summer sun, my fate casts a shadow.

3 Homecoming

This was an alien land.
Through the side entrance of this miserable planet,
I was drawn to the darkness of its innermost part
by the profound, mysterious shapes of its rooms.

Who am I?
I have no means to return,
and will continue writing these dispatches
as long as I am here.

I have ceased yearning for other planets.
There is more amusement here than in eternity,
and yet someday, as a postscript, I’ll return.

Most likely, I’ll be called back unexpectedly
from this intimate, foreign land —
My own homecoming, and yet I will not be there.

10 Unknown Person

The car spoke.
The pencil spoke.
Chemistry, itself, spoke.
“You have made us,” they said. “You human.”

I wonder, what would Tanuki think of this?
What would the stars think?
What might the gods think
of this overflowing of passion, this foolish arrogance?

We move toward death, all in a line,
beginning with he who has forgotten how to be alone,
until the unknown person, here, is erased.

The wind blows over the earth at dusk and again over an unknown star.
The gods walk the earth at dusk, the earth which belongs to dusk.
Even over the unknown stars, they walk.