Two Golden Shovels Tada Chimako and Issa
[Summer thin]
a golden shovel with Tada Chimako
What more about summer
except one’s dress is thin
and increasingly a
cinerary shade. The wind is gaining
swirls of soot from the
wildfires. Buckling under the weight
of worry, no one can breathe a breath of
embers. Air, is your Future this death–?
(Haiku translated by Hiroaki Sato, with permission to use.)
[Even when I am] i.
a golden shovel with Issa
Even on a mountain peak, even
in a cliff, I think of a
sea–more, of sandbar and clam.
Not to slurp down after the mollusk opens
in a bucket of plain water. Closer to his
–my husband’s–big
heart, his salty mouth.
Then I recall space and how singing
soars. As if a gull became a skylark.
(Haiku translated by Hiroaki Sato, with permission to use.)
