Sunday, March 31, 2013

Song of Myself, Part 51




Part 51
("Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman —from Leaves of Grass, in the 1892 edition)

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?



Saturday, March 23, 2013

あいしてる


「あいしてる」(谷川俊太郎『いちねんせい』より 1988)

あいしてるって どういうかんじ?
ならんですわって うっとりみつめ
あくびもくしゃみも すてきにみえて
ぺろっとなめたく なっちゃうかんじ

あいしてるって どういうかんじ?
みせびらかして やりたいけれど
だれにもさわって ほしくなくって
どこかへしまって おきたいかんじ

あいしてるって どういうかんじ?
いちばんだいじな ぷらもをあげて
つぎにだいじな きってもあげて
おまけにまんがも つけたいかんじ

Thursday, March 21, 2013

A gem found in the basement of Von's today


The Kiss by Shuntaro Tanikawa

As eyes are closing the world goes away
only the weight of tenderness assures me infinitely...

Silence turns into a quiet night
encircling us like a promise,
it now is not an estranging thing,
rather a tender farness that surrounds us
so therefore we by chance become lonely...

We search together
in a way that is more certain than to speak or look
and we discover
when we lose ourselves—

I wonder what I wanted to assure;
tenderness which returned from a long way off.
Losing words in purified silence
you now only just breathing.

You indeed now are life itself...
but even these words are punishable
presently when tenderness fills the world
and I fall down so I may live in it.