This poem was first published in Japanese in a special June issue of Gendai shi techo (Handbook of Contemporary Poetry) dedicated to poetic responses to 3.11.

Jeffrey ANGLES (1971- ), the translator of these poems, is an associate professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University.  He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishonen Culture in Japanese Modernist Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and translator of Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Ito 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.

 

Note from the poet about this poem: After Japan’s defeat in World War II, there were a number of poets who drew upon T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, wanting to start again, using the wasteland as a point of departure.  Now, if we are to draw upon their example, and start out again from the wastelands left by the disasters of 3/11, we must recognize that the wasteland is really within ourselves.  In other words, it stems from the spiritual destruction of desire and idleness that has, at some point unbeknownst to us, started growing rampant within us.  Even before we were victims, we were victimizers.  As long as we fail to recognize this, our words will lose their weight and circulate emptily.

 

 

かの国の四月が最も残酷な月なら

この国の三月はさらに峻烈な月

雪舞う海のそこの断層と断層とを衝突させ

潮流の古い記憶を新しい欲望とかきまぜた

眠りを覚まされた海水は盲目の高波となって

陸(くが)を目がけて幾重にも押し寄せた

残されたのは夥しい瓦礫と悲しみの山

私たちは夢うつつにくりかえし見せられた

 

＊

 

三月の黒い波が襲ったのは

昔ながらの日常だけではない

厳重に閉じこめられた矮神(ちいさがみ)が突如囲いを出され

みるみる天地を満たす大魔神に膨張した

人びとは集落ごろ流亡(るぼう)を始めた

流亡するのは一つの村

一つの町だけではない

国全体いや全世界が

終わりのない漂流記に入った

 

＊

 

雨が来た

（雨まじりの雪　雪まじりの雨）

雨が降る

（雨は瓦礫を洗い死者たちを慰めるか）

雨が降る

（雨は流亡する人びとを労わり遺棄された田畑を愛撫するか）

雨が降る

（雨は炎上する原子炉を冷やし暴れる原子核を宥めるか）

雨が降る

（雨は希望であるか重なる厄災なのか）

雨が降る

（壊れた陸に降る病んだ海に降りつづける）

 

＊

 

思いをひそめよう原子力とは何だったのか

母なる自然の子なる人間への窮極の贈りものか

子が母を襲い孕ませて引きずり出した水子ではないのか

呪われた鬼子を牢に閉じこめ強制して働かせつづけ

力尽きると生き埋めにしてきたのが事実ではないのか

埋められた生殺しの屍体がいつか息を吹き返し

復讐する不安と恐怖とを封印してきたのが真相ではないのか

いま秘密の襞襞が発かれようとしている

 

＊

 

雨が上がり天に虹の大弓が掛かる

約束の美しい虹ではなく宣告の恐ろしい虹

〈畸形の魚たちが歯を剥いて波打ちぎわに殺到し

〈病気の果実が血を滲ませて地に落ちつづける

〈風はふんだんな毒を含んでの湿って重たく

〈光が無数の針となって執拗に襲いかかる

〈すべての内蔵は私たちの裡で叛乱を起こし

〈脳髄は発熱し煮えたぎって熔解する

私たちは窓を閉じ硝子に覆い布を垂らす

けれどもいったん網膜に焼きついた色の氾濫は

目をつぶってもこすっても消えることがない

 

＊

 

テレヴィを点けっぱなしで見つづける

新聞を隅から隅までくりかえし読む

安全な野菜をインターネットで捜しまくり

無害な水を求めて電話をかけまくる

私たちはマスクとサングラスで武装した傍観者か

私たちもまた被害者であり漂流者

家という方舟(はこぶね)ごと漂いつづけ

漂されつづけて目的地を知らない受難者

 

＊

 

受難者を癒してくれるのは外ならぬ受難ということ

運命の理不尽を訴えてシャツの胸元を引き裂き

摂理の不公平に抗議して涙を流しつづける

嘆きの声がつまるところ嘆く者を慰め

流す涙がとどのつまり泣く者を浄める

けれども私たちは慰まない浄まらない

なぜなら私たちの嗟嘆と抗議の終(つい)の相手は

私たち自身であり私たちの強欲と怠惰そのものだから

私たちは簡単に慰められてはならないだろう

たわやすく浄められてはならないだろう

私たちは蔑まれつづけ打たれつづけなければならないだろう

 

＊

 

幸なるかなそれでもなお耳を澄ますべきもの

目を向けるべきものが私たちには残されてある

波にさらわれた無数の死者たちの無言

不自由に耐える膨大な漂亡者たちの沈黙

加えるに無為から立ちあがった若者たちの眩しさ

その眩しさを支えているのは死者たち漂亡者たちの只ならぬ静けさ

私たちが学ばなければならないのは彼らの無名・彼らの無償

 

＊

 

私はいまここにこれらのことを書き記す

書き記す私は特定の誰かであってはならないだろう

名前も個性も持たない者でなければならないだろう

顔のない目であり目に直結した手である者

手は闇の中で書き記すすべを憶えなければならないだろう

目は希望でも絶望でもなく真実を瞶(みつ)めなければならないだろう

 

 

 

If April is the cruelest month in that country

Then March was even unrelenting in this country

As the snow danced on top the sea

It crashed one layer of seabed into another

Mixing new desires into the ancient memories of tide

Seawater, awakened from slumber, grew into great waves

Took aim at the land, and descended again and again

Leaving vast quantities of debris and mountains of sadness

We watched this over and over as we wandered the line

Between dream and wakefulness

 

 

*

 

It was not just daily life as it once was

That the black wave of March assaulted

The Dwarf God imprisoned under tight control suddenly escaped

Swelled before our eyes into Daimajin, filling heaven and earth

People set adrift whole settlements at a time

Not just one village, not just one town

But an entire country, no, the entire world

Entered into an endless

Era of drift

 

*

 

The rain came

(Rain mixing with snow, snow mixing with rain)

The rain falls

(Will the rain bathing the rubble soothe the dead?)

The rain falls

(Will the rain cool the blazing reactor and pacify the nucleus?)

The rain falls

(Does the rain represent hope or yet another disaster?)

The rain falls

(The rain continues to fall on the broken land and sickly sea)

 

*

 

Let us collect our thoughts, what is nuclear power?

Mother Nature’s greatest gift to humanity, or rather,

The miscarriage after the child rapes and impregnates its own mother?

Isn’t it true that we shut a demon in a cage and forced it to work

Then when its power was gone, we had it buried alive?

Isn’t it true that the buried, anguished corpse has regained its breath

And has returned, harboring its anxiety and fear for revenge?

Now is the time it reveals its secrets tucked away

 

*

 

The rain lets up and a great rainbow hangs in the sky

Not the rainbow of promise, but terrifying rainbow of our sentencing

We close our windows and cover the glass with cloths

But the flood of color that has burned its way into our membranes

Does not disappear, even when we close and rub our eyes

 

*

 

We leave the televisions on and watch

We read and reread the newspapers from top to bottom

We scour the internet for unpoisoned vegetables

We call all over looking for undamaged water

Are we onlookers disguised in our masks and sunglasses?

If so, we are also victims and wanderers

We float along in the arks of our homes

Sufferers who float along continuously

Not knowing our destination

 

*

 

What heals the sufferer is only more suffering

We rail against the outrageousness of fate and tear at our shirts

We protest against the unfairness of providence and weep continuously

When cries catch in the throat, they comfort the lamenter

The flow of tears eventually purifies the one who weeps

But we are not comforted, we are not purified

The reason is that our grievances and protests

Are finally against ourselves, our avarice, and our idleness

We cannot be easily comforted

We cannot be easily purified

We must be scorned over and over

We must be beaten over and over again

 

*

 

Will we be fortunate?  If so, we must prick up our ears all the more

We must turn our eyes to what has remained

The mute words of the countless dead snatched by the waves

The silence of the swelling numbers of displaced withstanding privation

And the brilliance of the youth who have stood up from inaction

Supporting them is none other than the silence of the dead and displaced

What we must learn is their anonymity, their gracious unconditionality

 

*

 

I write these things here and now

It does not matter that I, the author, am anyone in particular

I am a person without name and without individuality

A person with eyes but without a face, with hands tied directly to sight

Hands that must remember how to write in the darkness

Eyes that must see neither hope nor disappointment, only truth

 

Daimajin: Literally “the god who brings great trouble”