Voices of Summer
Wrapped in a thick wool manteau
purple like the fog
It looks far far
Wrapped in a thick wool manteau
purple like the fog
Saburo! Saburo! yells
his mother, awaiting a reply
Above the deep slumber of summer
a lizard faces the the wind
It looks near near
Heavy-looking knees have begun to move
In an outlying village, adults fret over the weather
fuss about
Crouching, fallen silent,
making us gossip all day long
When I split it, the water runs like pollen
Chika Sagawa, the pen name of Aiko Kawasaki, was born in 1911 in Hokkaido, Japan. One of Japan’s first female Modernist poets, Sagawa was posthumously published by under the title Sagawa Chika Shishu (Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa) in 1936.
Sawako Nakayasu is an artist working with language, performance, and translation—separately and in various combinations. Her books include The Ants (Les Figues Press), Texture Notes (Letter Machine Editions), the translation of Tatsumi Hijikata’s Costume en Face: A Primer of Darkness for Young Boys and Girls (UDP), The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa (Canarium Books), and Mouth: Eats Color – Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals (Rogue Factorial), a multilingual work of both original and translated poetry.
