62 Sonnets (excerpt)

Shuntaro Tanikawa
Translated from the Japanese by Martin Rock

1 Shade Tree

In any case, joy lives inside this day
as in the heart of the new sun—
and in dining tables, and in guns,
and even in gods, though they remain oblivious.

In the tree’s shade, human hearts return
to embrace the day’s humility.
Freely, in this place,
one stands for a moment

to read the sky,
to sing the clouds’ song,
to pray, simply because it is time to summon pleasure.

I must forget
that which is beyond forgetting.
The sun glares. The trees glare back.

2 Yearning

In the shadow of the June sun, I accept my fate.
I’ve become alienated even from my own desires.
My yearning dashes about
vainly, with no time to look back.

I’ve made the mistake of loving without conviction.
All the while, just this charming exterior—
flattery without the knowledge of who flatters.
Fields and clouds are such simple things.

Soon, around my small grave,
only people, rocks, and sky will remain. And yet—
what immortal soul remembers tomorrow?

I’ve made the mistake of forgetting the gods.
Without life, how on earth can anything happen?
In the obscure early summer sun, my fate casts a shadow.

3 Homecoming

This was an alien land.
Through the side entrance of this miserable planet,
I was drawn to the darkness of its innermost part
by the profound, mysterious shapes of its rooms.

Who am I?
I have no means to return,
and will continue writing these dispatches
as long as I am here.

I have ceased yearning for other planets.
There is more amusement here than in eternity,
and yet someday, as a postscript, I’ll return.

Most likely, I’ll be called back unexpectedly
from this intimate, foreign land —
My own homecoming, and yet I will not be there.

10 Unknown Person

The car spoke.
The pencil spoke.
Chemistry, itself, spoke.
“You have made us,” they said. “You human.”

I wonder, what would Tanuki think of this?
What would the stars think?
What might the gods think
of this overflowing of passion, this foolish arrogance?

We move toward death, all in a line,
beginning with he who has forgotten how to be alone,
until the unknown person, here, is erased.

The wind blows over the earth at dusk and again over an unknown star.
The gods walk the earth at dusk, the earth which belongs to dusk.
Even over the unknown stars, they walk.

What Keeps Us

Poems to Read in Community

Inspired by C. D. Wright’s poem “What Keeps,” we offer Shuntaro Tanikawa’s “62 Sonnets (excerpt),” translated from the Japanese by Martin Rock, as part of a twenty-poem selection from poems we’ve featured in 2024—poems, like bread, that one might pass across the table—to a loved one, or to oneself. 

Read editor Lloyd Wallace’s introduction to the collection and statements from our staff readers hereRead poems by selecting below.

What Keeps

Some nights We stay up
passing it back and
forth
between us
drinking deep

Read >

This Era

Forests and cities

along the way sleep like huge dark churches.

Read >

Talisman

each of us bearing the art
in a curve of wing, a small motif
of feather,

Read >

Rewind

Have you ever seen something that buzzes inside you?
I am watching two kids encounter each other

Read >

Rationale

Because she still won’t sleep alone, you sleep deeply
with her small warm body wrapped in your arms.

Read >

Pupusas

no, the pupusa is a portrait
            of this life, crusting & breaking
                        with every lick & tooth

Read >

Psalm III

in what language should I speak to you, sun
so you’ll rise tomorrow for my child, so you’ll
rise and stimulate the growth of our food,

Read >

Night Song

You’ll never know
what became of me
in the dark, how
my body opened,

Read >

Handfuls

Summer is a pure lone mountain.
Somehow, a winter flowers against an enormous blue loneliness

Read >

Eurydice

It snowed the day I died, a freak spring storm.
(It was in the papers.)

Read >

December

Instead of snow, a dark pouring rain
to dodge as passersby reject us.  No spruces, but sycamores with their white cankers.

Read >

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Headshot of Shuntaro Tanikawa

Shuntaro Tanikawa is one of Japan’s most prolific and celebrated living poets. Born in Tokyo in 1931, he published his first collection of poems, 二十億光年の孤独 (Two Billion Light Years of Solitude; Sogensha, 1952). Tanikawa has won numerous awards and publications, including the fourth Japan Record Award for Best Lyricist for 月火水木金土日の歌 (Songs of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) in 1962, the Japan Translation Culture Award for マザー・グースのうた (Mother Goose Songs) in 1975, the thirty-fourth Yomiuri Prize for Literature for 日々の地図 (Map of Days; Shueisha, 1982), and the first Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize for 世間知ラズ (The Naif; Shichosha, 1993) In addition to poetry, he has published a wide range of works, including picture books, essays, translations, scripts, and lyrics.

Headshot of Martin Rock

Martin Rock is the author of RESIDUUM, editor’s choice for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s first book prize, as well as the chapbooks DEAR MARK (Brooklyn Arts Press), and FISH, YOU BIRD (Pilot, co-written with Phillip D. Ischy). His work has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing, Best New Poets, Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Conduit, Waxwing, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. He teaches writing and climate justice at UC San Diego and directs the Unsung Masters Series with poets Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller. Read more of his work at www.martinrock.us.

Cover of Asymptote July 2024

Summer 2024

Taipei City

Editor-in-Chief
Lee Yew Leong

Assistant Managing Editors
Daljinder Johal
Malak Khalil
Marina Martino
Samuel Miller
Janet Phillips
Lindsay Semel

Poetry Editor
Lee Yew Leong

Winner of the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award, Asymptote is the premier site for world literature in translation. We take our name from the dotted line on a graph that a mathematical function may tend toward, but never reach. Similarly, a translated text may never fully replicate the effect of the original; it is its own creative act.

Our mission is simple: to unlock the literary treasures of the world. To date, our magazine has featured work from 105 countries and 84 languages, all never-before-published poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and interviews by writers and translators such as J. M. Coetzee, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Can Xue, Junot Díaz, Ismail Kadare, David Mitchell, Anne Carson, Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, Ann Goldstein, and Deborah Smith.

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