Toshifumi Sugai/Japan

Anemones

Anemones I want to depict.

Anemones I cannot depict.

Anemones bloom in my heart.

Anemones are unseen.

Anemones are vague.

Anemones have disappeared.

Anemones I want to embrace.

Anemones I want to keep.

Haruko Hirano/Japan

Walk beyond the farthest mountain

I walk slowly holding a small thing,

Watching ears of pampas grasses waving,

A tiny butterfly dancing around leopard plants,

Whiskers of polygonum sparkling in the morning light.

Look, here

Is where you lay,

Eating your time,

Belly on the ground,

Listening to the words of earth,

Not sleeping,

Just pretending to sleep.

Riyoko Hara/Japan

Peace is ...

Two elder girls were picking flowers 

On the paths in a large rice field.

One girl had pink flowers,

The other had yellow ones.

The rice field was so large,

But there seemed to be no flowers,

I looked around but could not find any.

Far away were seen a row of mountains.

And this rice field was like a fantasy world.

I tried hard to find flowers in vain.

Gyo Takano/Japan

fledglings

below the precipice sprawls despair, and at the precarity of peering in 

they hold the mournful meaning, send a glance, the corpse’s froth meanly menacing

a directly descending beak, overbearing

into the bottomless darkness, it cut across my field of vision

dragged forth by the hair, my disappointment becomes known

both legs thrust out, the electronic sound rings endlessly

if i start walking, the compass of my self-restraint runs wild

you, listening to the treble tones of birds at the harbor

NIJO Cenka/Japan

Inome

There’s a boar 

trapped in my left chest.

Its eyes shine through the slits between my ribs, 

and sometimes it tramples my diaphragm 

with its hard hooves.

I’d love to let it run free, 

but if it charges out blindly and hurts someone...

that’s the last thing I want.

So I keep it here, caged but still breathing.

Megumi Watanabe/Japan

Quiet

 

A winter shrouded in a years‐long gap of jet‐black heaviness

On slightly withered evergreens and

On completely bare deciduous trees

A light snow falls equally

A light snow melts

Like the purity of the dripping droplets

A trace of weariness resided in an earnest face

There was a time of reconciliation

Ahn Sang-hak/Republic of Korea

That Person Came Back but I Was Not There 

I should have waited for that person then.

As a roe deer glances back when it crosses a hill,

just for a moment I should have stood and waited there,

if it were night I should have waited for dawn.

if it were winter, I should have waited for spring.

Like a bear waiting for a salmon.

Sin Hyeon-rim/Republic of Korea

A Man Who Forgot how to Love

Not earning tomorrow‘s rice, the price of rice rose like bubbles.

News of suicide bombers piled up like tax bills.

Not knowing the laundry shop, people stricken by poverty who committed suicide easily disappeared.

With so much forgetting, we forget history, forget how to kiss,

forget how to love, become workholics.

A man who forgot how to love passed by a woman who had forgotten sex.

Song Kyung-dong/Republic of Korea

Answering Trivial Questions

One day when I was twenty-eight years old

a man calling himself a Marxist came to ask me to join a new organization.

Near the end of the meeting, after some talking, he asked:

By the way, from which university did you graduate, comrade Song?

Smiling,I answered, high school was the end of my education.

I graduated from juvenile detention and have been a labourer ever since.

Son Cecilia/Republic of Korea

Red Ivy

A woman from the nineteenth floor who flew through the air and shattered,

is crawling up the outer wall of the apartment to meet her four-year old son.

She feels she has nearly arrived but it’s still just one and a half floors.

Everywhere she places her palms the crimson trace is vivid.

Two years ago, immediately after the incident,

they packed up and left at midnight.

I wonder if she knows that or not.

Park So-ran/Republic of Korea

Oh, Guitar

On a trash-collecting handcart lies a wornout acoustic guitar.

This was someone’s song, in those days, words hovering nearest to a heart.

No matter what, the wheels roll on.

With every rattle, moans ooze out, hitting offbeat with no score.

A song is not salvation, not eternity.

A song is not a song, is nothing.

Kim Hae-ja/Republic of Korea

Dead Slow

Great love comes in dead slow

like a great ship putting into port.

Little body, please guide me.

Just as a great ship following a tugboat

surrenders the power of its whole body,

great love comes in so mild and cautious,

comes in at a speed close to death.

Ahn Do-hyun/Republic of Korea

Diary

In the morning, I cut the scrawny, overgrown eyebrows of chrysanthemum flowers with scissors.

In the afternoon, I wrote and mailed off a postcard to the stag beetle that visited the edge of the porch last summer.

I also asked the doctor who came to mend the broken persimmon tree to repair its shade, too.

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

Park Nohae/Republic of Korea

Once Again

A person full of hope

is already hope.

A person seeking the way

is already a new way.

A truly good person

is already a good world.

ONAI Kotaro/Japan

No-tell hotel

As Sunday comes to close

I open the curtains in the south-facing room

From my chair

I can watch the no-tell hotel on the beach

Against a backdrop of darkness

Stirred by the heat

Misako Yarita/Japan

Distant Memory

Right now, I am strolling along the green sidewalks of Gaien Nishi Dori Avenue. I am 80 centimeters tall and proud of my long legs and pure white fur. I am called Borzoi, which means agile in Russian. However, I walk very slowly to keep up with my two males of the human animal followers. People say I'm proud, but I'm not like common dogs, so it's only natural. The memories that linger in my blood from my ancestors are vivid. I ran around in all directions chasing rabbits in the snowfield as far as the eye can see.I was also very good at zigzag running. I even competed with horses controlled by humans, and I could run long distances with ease. The sky and forests were big. I could see the frozen city of Petersburg in winter and the Neva River from the back of my eyes.

Chikae Taniguchi/Japan

The Bellybutton

Since having had that cord cut

I had to start being myself

Driven by the first breath

Breathing hard with all my might

I finally found my voice, and began to speak

I can’t expose my bellybutton to the public

NAMBARA Jushi/Japan

Citrus

We are very different, but not completely different,

It' s enough if we have a little bit something in common,

"Isn't this good?"

"Yes, it's very good!"

We peel a delicious citrus and say, "Wow, it's so sour!"

It'll be nice if we think each other's face is lovely.

Yasushi Ikeda/Japan

Umbrella

Under an umbrella is a shade of silence.

Ease of no need to talk about trifles,

Free from the task to think about whatnot.

Receiving what comes from the sky,

And letting it fall softly,

Is this a kind of religious deed?