The Art of Being Alone: Poems 1952–2009

A Pensive Youth

90 A Pensive Youth うつむく青年 (1971) Can You Hear? How about being silent? just a bit of time would do how about staying silent, newspapers, radios and you, too (and also poets)? Can you hear the quiet that lurks between lovers at dusk? Can you hear that quiet in the gentle eyes of a deer looking at you can you hear the quiet the sky is always secretly hiding? Quietly so quietly as to not deafen the quiet can you say a good morning and a good night? A Pensive Youth 91 The Sea beneath the cloud whorl the undulating skin of the planet at times violently snaps a gigantic tanker like a twig at times allows a small dugout to drift gently the yet-to-be-developed negative of Land tying patterns together separating God from gods shutting in islands transporting slaves the weightiest blue breaks into shimmering white it provides a net full of fish for a poor fisherman a single line of horizon for a dreaming youth the tumult from pre-genesis surging over and over toward the other shore The sea! 92 The New Frontier — Apollo 11 — No flowers will be there No seeds either No breeze will be there No loose locks on a nape either No small birds will be there No plankton either Just a man A single man is standing In the new wilderness (Fragile flesh encased in a bulky space suit) But Dreams will be there Prejudices, too Courage will be there Fear, too Countless words will be there (Oh, not yet familiar God!) Silence, too Because it is a man Because of a single man in a new frontier™ うつむく青年 • 1971 ...