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The Fish’s Desire
by Shuzo Takiguchi
Virginal decorations.
The pain of countless upside-down candles.
The branches and flowers of transparent trees.
The rumble of infinity’s mirror
and the sudden spasm of house windows.
My whole body.
In the fossilized water that brightens day by day
my desire still swims.
I, bastard child of the giant chandelier called the blue sky.
No one calls me the sphinx of love.
In a jasper fable, my dream
glittered all the more blue.
—Translated from the Japanese by Mary Jo Bang and Yuki Tanaka
My Bird
by Ingeborg Bachmann
Whatever comes to pass: the devastated world
sinks back into twilight,
the forest offers it a sleeping potion,
and from the tower the watchman’s forsaken,
peaceful and constant the eyes of the owl stare down.
Whatever comes to pass: you know your time,
my bird, you put on your veil
and fly through the mist to me.
We peer into the haze where the rabble houses.
Yon follow my nod and storm out
in a whirl of feathers and fur—
My ice-gray shoulder companion, my weapon,
adorned with that feather, my only weapon!
My only finery: your veil and your feather.
And even when my skin burns
in the needle dance beneath the tree,
and the hip-high shrubs
tempt me with their spicy leaves,
when my curls dart like snake tongues,
sway and long for moisture,
the dust of distant stars still falls
right on my hair.
When I, in a helmet of smoke,
come back to my senses.
my bird, my nighttime ally,
when I’m ablaze in the night
the dark grove crackles
and I hammer the sparks from my limbs.
And when I stay ablaze as I am,
loved by the flame
until the resin streams out of the trunks,
drips over the wounds and
spins the earth warm into thread
(and though you rob my heart at night,
my bird of belief, my bird of faith!)
the watchtower moves into brightness
where you, tranquil now,
alight in magnificent peace—
whatever comes to pass.
—translated from the German by Mark Anderson
What My Father Knows
by Ross Shideler
My father raised me to know
that I am not different
from anyone else. This knowledge
makes me respond to you all
with doubt.
If you dreamed
as an eight year old
of shoveling coal into a furnace
and the furnace exploded
blowing you sky high,
and you saw from up there
while hanging to a stove pipe
the entire city, then
came down slowly
to the basement again,
why don’t you wish
to be a bird as I do?
And assuming
that you discovered around fourteen
that your parents were nice
but not your own
and you watched every night
for a starship to arrive,
why aren’t you aware of how alien
we all are to this planet?
Perhaps most confusing
is that I know you have spent
as many days and nights
as I have fearing death
and dreaming of a private escape
or of a discovery to save everyone,
yet still you seem to forget
what heroes and heroines we are
to get up every morning,
to go to bed every night.