Dying by Toge Sankichi

!

Loud in my ear: screams.

Soundlessly welling up,

pouncing on me:

space, all upside-down.

Hanging, fluttering clouds of dust

smelling of smoke,

and, running madly about, figures.

“Ah,

get out

of here!”

Scattering fragments of brick,

I spring to my feet;

my body’s

on fire.

The hot blast

that blew me down from behind

set sleeves, shoulders

on fire.

Amid the smoke I grab

a corner of the cement water tank;

my head--

already in.

The clothes I splash water on

burn, drop off:

gone.

Wires, boards, nails, glass,

a rippling wall of tiles.

Fingernails burn;

heels--gone;

plastered to my back: a sheet of molten lead.

“Owww!”

Flames already

blacken;

telephone poles, walls, too.

Eddies

of flame and smoke

blow down on my broken head.

“Hiro-chan! Hiro-chan!”

Press hand to breast:

ah--a bloody cotton hole.

Fallen, I cry--

Child! Child! Child! Where are you?

Amid the smoke that crawls along the ground--

where could they have come from?--

hand in hand,

round and round as in the bon dance,

naked girls:

one falls, all fall.

From under tiles,

someone else’s shoulder:

a hairless old woman,

driven up by the heat,

writhing, crying shrilly.

Beside the road where flames already flicker,

stomachs distended like great drums,

even their lips torn off:

lumps of red flesh.

A hand that grabs my ankle

slips off, peels off.

An eyeball that pleads at my feet.

A head boiled white.

Hair, brain matter my hand presses down on.

Steamy smoke; fiery air that rushes at me.

Amid the darkness of flying sparks:

children’s eyes, the color of gold.

Burning body,

scalding throat;

arm

that suddenly collapses;

shoulder

that sinks to the ground.

Oh, I can go

no farther.

In the lonely dark,

the thunder in my ears suddenly fades.

Ah!

Why?

Why here

by the side of the road

cut off, dear, from you;

why

must

I

die

?

TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY RICHARD H. MINEAR

From “Poems For The Millennium, Volume Two,” edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (University of California Press: 878 pp., $24.95)