A Poem by Shuzo Takiguchi

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Nocturne

From a glass where birds live
a prisoner removes her gloves.
A moonlight bath gives her the equilibrium of someone in mourning.
Night clearly illuminates everything inside night.
A fountain continually sewed up the wrinkles of an empty bed.
She is as thin as a keyhole.
Soon, inside her pelvis, she felt free.

Between today and tomorrow, a white handkerchief.

An endless vacation of red lips.
The sun is sediment at the bottom of the glass,
together with the sleepless birds.

Shuzo Takiguchi (1903–1979) was a poet, painter, art critic, and one of the most prominent Surrealists in Japan. He spearheaded an interdisciplinary art group called Jikken Kobo (“Experimental Workshop”) which was active from 1951 to 1957. His first collection of poems, The Poetic Experiments of Shuzo Takiguchi 1927–1937, was published in 1967.

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Yuki Tanaka was born and raised in Yamaguchi, Japan. He is currently a PhD candidate at Washington University in St. Louis.

Mary Jo Bang’s most recent collection of poems is

The Last Two Seconds (Graywolf Press). She received a National Book Critics Circle Award for Elegy in 2007. Her translation of Dante’s Inferno, with illustrations by Henrik Drescher, was published in 2012.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at [email protected].