Today's poem
Ale with a poetess from Surrey in the UK at a sports bar in Shibuya, Tokyo. There, inundated with foreign visitors gathering for Rugby World Cup. I brought up a short poem 'Salmon Port' by Anne-Marie Fyfe to her, in turn, she talked about a quatrain 'The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon' by Seamus Heaney. The salmon hut in Anne-Marie Fyfe's poem might correspond to 番屋 that is seen as, e.g., a herring hut in Hokkaidō. I was nostalgic, recalling the Toyohira River or Murakami city, Niigata. Glint, flicker - did I see, fade-in, fade-out, salmons leaping up from the water in September mist?
The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon
by Seamus Heaney
The ridged lip set upstream, you flail
Inland again; your exile in the sea
Unconditionally cancelled by the pull
Of your home water's gravity.
And I stand in the centre, casting.
The river, cramming under me, reflects
Slung gaff and net, and a white wrist flicking,
Setting you up the well-dressed specks.
Walton thought garden-worms, perfumed
By oil crushed from dark ivy berries
The lure that took you best. But here you're doomed
By senseless hunger in your eyes.
Ripples arrowing beyond me,
The current strumming rhythms up my leg:
Involved in water's choreography
I go like you by gleam and drag
And will strike when you strike, to kill.
Ale with a poetess from Surrey in the UK at a sports bar in Shibuya, Tokyo. There, inundated with foreign visitors gathering for Rugby World Cup. I brought up a short poem 'Salmon Port' by Anne-Marie Fyfe to her, in turn, she talked about a quatrain 'The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon' by Seamus Heaney. The salmon hut in Anne-Marie Fyfe's poem might correspond to 番屋 that is seen as, e.g., a herring hut in Hokkaidō. I was nostalgic, recalling the Toyohira River or Murakami city, Niigata. Glint, flicker - did I see, fade-in, fade-out, salmons leaping up from the water in September mist?
The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon
by Seamus Heaney
The ridged lip set upstream, you flail
Inland again; your exile in the sea
Unconditionally cancelled by the pull
Of your home water's gravity.
And I stand in the centre, casting.
The river, cramming under me, reflects
Slung gaff and net, and a white wrist flicking,
Setting you up the well-dressed specks.
Walton thought garden-worms, perfumed
By oil crushed from dark ivy berries
The lure that took you best. But here you're doomed
By senseless hunger in your eyes.
Ripples arrowing beyond me,
The current strumming rhythms up my leg:
Involved in water's choreography
I go like you by gleam and drag
And will strike when you strike, to kill.
We're both annihilated with the fly.
You can't resist a gullet full of steel.
I will turn home fish-smelling, scaly.
You can't resist a gullet full of steel.
I will turn home fish-smelling, scaly.
Salmon by Yūichi Takahashi