Monday, 5 May 2025

Sagawa Aki/Japan

Soul Diver

            

I dive into the human sea-bottom

I search for a soul like a clear pearl

An extraordinary secretion inside the shell-body

Guarded by the hands of a water nymph

Distorted yet brilliant

Resembling the softness of white flesh

Its core the trematode in ancient darkness

Its kernel a nothing grain of sand


Clad with death melted into the sea

And thoughts of the dead

Only a single being tiny as a poppy seed

Enlarging eventually into

Life itself

           

For a soul diver

The most beautiful shell is hidden

Inside the sea-bottom

Surely requiring a deep and difficult dive

Until we open the hard valve

With our own words

           

Before all oxygen on the planet disappears

Can all souls in the world meet each other?

I would like to search for the souls

Of those most wounded

I know there must be unimaginable glittering ever-suffocating there 


This earth is itself

Only a single soul in the universe

An extraordinary secretion,

Blue pearl.

There must be others searching

For its glitter

Far away



Translated by Kijima Hajime & Leza Lowitz

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