UNTITLED (poem) - Mitsuharu Kaneko - Japan

Untitled

Staggering. I’m already 51.

When it comes to my wish in this world
it’s to see those women once again.
Those women that I slipped by, without
means of conversing with them.

No matter how completely they’ve changed,
well, it’s the same here, with me, isn’t it.

I’d love to follow them to the very end
just to hear one utterance:
“Wow, you’re the one I knew then?”

Translator's Note: In his memoirs, especially in Shijin (The Poet), which was originally serialised in a monthly from 1956 to 1957 though not published in book form until 1973, Kaneko recollects the many women he casually slept with, some of them prostitutes. He also describes the women with whom he would decide he had fallen in love but whom he would spurn as soon as they agreed and met him. This happened mainly from his mid teens to his mid twenties. He ascribes that behaviour to youthful angst and the zeitgeist of the era. Also, the husband of the young woman who adopted Kaneko was rich and tolerant enough to allow such conduct.