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    New Selected Poems
    New Selected Poems
    New Selected Poems
    Ebook238 pages1 hour

    New Selected Poems

    By Shuntaro Tanikawa

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Shuntaro Tanikawa has been the most inventive modern Japanese poet, ever since he published Two Billion Light Years of Solitude (1952), his first book, aged twenty one. Undamaged by Japan's post-War trauma, he took up the language and ran with it. He has continued running. When in 1968 his first Collected Poems appeared the critics noted at once his popularity and his refusal to compromise with the negative tones that dominated the poetic palette of contemporary Japan. This new selection supplements his original Selected Poems published by Carcanet in 1998.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateOct 15, 2015
    ISBN9781784100698
    New Selected Poems
    Author

    Shuntaro Tanikawa

    Shuntaro Tanikawa’s sixty-odd collections of poems have received awards in England, China, Japan and the United States, including the 1988 American Book Award. He translated the Mother Goose Rhymes and, for several decades, the celebrated comic strip Peanuts. Having read at festivals on three continents and in numerous countries, Tanikawa has achieved a reputation as not only one of the most popular but also one of the most inventive Japanese poets of the modern age.

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      Book preview

      New Selected Poems - Shuntaro Tanikawa

      2015.

      from

      Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude

      (1952)

      Ambitions

      I govern the time

      by skipping three records.

      I reverse time

      by going back to largo from finale.

      I even govern the BBC

      by starting with the middle of Side 3.

      ‘Boys, be ambitious!’

      At the Bus Stop

      Around the circle here come

      a bicycle,

      a wrecker,

      a jeep.

      Around the circle here comes

      a 1950 Studebaker

      (an exciting proposal for the future).

      Around the circle here comes

      a thirties Dodge truck

      (the offal of modern science).

      Around the circle here come

      a truck,

      a cart,

      a motorcycle,

      and, last of all,

      my shabby silver bus.

      A Night

      A night –

      A good old man who died an hour ago

      is ascending towards the sub-stratosphere

      on a chariot especially dispatched.

      A night –

      A child to be born in about an hour

      is descending from the sub-stratosphere

      astride a stork.

      On Olympus

      Miss Clotho, Miss Lachesis and Miss Atropos

      are drinking coffee

      and watching the man and child on TV.

      A poet in Tokyo,

      while praying,

      saw them

      on the screen

      of the starry sky.

      A Grey Stage

      Clouds over the early a.m. town, about 90%.

      I have left the city behind in a nightmare.

      Night rain bleached the neon white.

      Both the history of this town

      and its geography

      have only three or four lines in the encyclopaedia.

      Not a single crisp footstep is heard.

      Greetings are at zero probability.

      Not having a map, I am uneasy.

      Suddenly feeling humble,

      I make cardboard trees to line the streets.

      A grey stage; a sky-blue nursery tale.

      In the early a.m. town, 90% humidity.

      And also some sort of inorganic matter . . .

      I walk faster.

      Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude

      Human beings on this small orb

      sleep, waken and work, and sometimes

      wish for friends on Mars.

      I’ve no notion

      what Martians do on their small orb

      (neririing or kiruruing or hararaing).

      But sometimes they like to have friends on Earth.

      No doubt about that.

      Universal gravitation is the power of solitudes

      pulling each other.

      Because the universe is distorted,

      we all seek for one another.

      Because the universe goes on expanding,

      we are all uneasy.

      With the chill of two billion light-years of solitude,

      I suddenly sneezed.

      Hospital

      Blue sky and sun dissolve in a dirty creosol solution

      and in the dark corridor not science but eroded emotions pile up.

      Clothing of even primary colours is defenceless against X-rays.

      White gowns also are inconsolable.

      When patients

      uncertainly confuse their feelings

      in the bottom of coloured test tubes,

      white doctors

      become efficient, cold machines

      and operate efficient, cold machines.

      I hear no human voices in the host of echoes.

      Here, everything is materialism.

      A hospital resembles a modern city that keeps no secrets.

      Secrets and X-Rays

      Although Mr X-Ray has interpreted me only materialistically,

      he continues growling, thinking he has found out all my secrets.

      In the dark corner, where the red-light burns

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