Beneath the sun
My interchangeable routines
Are formed from superfluous things
Managing this place is
A metal will, swelling repeatedly with the heat
This moment, most likely,
Made of metallic codes
Circulating beneath your skin
Is a radiant spirit
Swimming like freshwater hydra in an experiment
Where the white of the will boils forth
It embraces matter reckless and unrestrained
Yet my thoughts make their way into grammar
With unsteady, staggering steps
(No more than that, no more than that, no more than that…)
That which exists
Is that which should not
We
Go forward
Always betrayed by ourselves
Beneath the sun
Nothing new at all materialises
My routines, though bearing nouns,
Vanish each time we speak their name
We
Move about as we struggle
Sing of the world as we struggle
Sleep as we struggle
(No more than that, no more than that, still…)
Beneath the signs of the splitting blue
Sugar-castles made of trifling things
Move from the edge of sky
Crossing my field of vision as I wave
Before long, the rain falls, transgressing borders
Wrapping us in the aroma of water
Without a sound
The rain
Melts away all the nutrients
I’ve collected
Beneath the sun
A sonic rain falls
Called by an underground vein of water
Right at midday (that point known as now)
Drinking down my shadow like an unconditional surrender
Above you and your spirit’s repeated musical modulations
Loudly, the rain dances
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Minashita Kiriu
was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1970 and was educated at Waseda University. Her first book of poetry Onsoku Heiwa (Sonic Peace) was published in 2005 and the following year was awarded the Nakahara Chuya Poetry Prize. Her second book of poetry Zekkyo (Border Z) was published in 2008 and was awarded the Bansui Poetry Prize. She has also written a volume of essays on the problems facing contemporary Japanese youth.Jeffrey Angles is an associate professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Japanese Modernist Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and translator of Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Itō Hiromi (Action Books, 2009), the award-winning Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako (University of California Press, 2010), and numerous other works of prose and poetry. He also writes poetry in his second language, Japanese.
