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Two Poems by Ryuichi Tamura

A Plan for Poetry

I want to do a book of poems called "A letter from Germany" and then

"African Sonnets"

I'd like to start that when I reach fifty so

I'll have to go to Germany and Africa

See the woods in Germany

Listen to the footsteps of the animals in Africa

I don't need to hear human languages

I don't have to study languages

Train your ears to hear things other than words

In order to see the things that are born from black soil and return to black soil

train you eyes

and your tongue

to caress people that are made from the soil

languages made from the soil

The Light at Thirteen Second Intervals

I don't like new houses

It may be because I was born and raised in an old house

There isn't even a dinner table to share with the dead

nor space for a sentient being to grow

It was maybe twenty years ago that

I wrote in a poem

"a pear tree split"

I planted a pear tree again

on the smal lot of this new house

Morning Watering it is my job

I want to grow death

at least inside of the pear tree

At night I read Victorian pornography

My only illusion is

"I have no illusions about the future"

Yet, at that moment there is a light

on the horizon 40 kilometers outside my window

A light from the lighthouse at Oshima

at thirteen second intervals

- Ryuichi Tamura

(translated from Japanese by Sam Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura)

Ryuichi Tamura (1923-1998), foremost post WWII poet of Japan, was the founder of the poetry magazine Arechi (The Wasteland) after WWII. A collection of Mr. Tamura's poems has been recently been published in English by the translators Sam Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura. The book is available by through the publishers, CCC Books, PO Box 50216, Palo Alto, CA, 94303-0216.

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