BALD Poem by Mitsuharu Kaneko

On the day of my only son Ken's draft physicals (1)
Sea's daybreak
peeling off
like a shark's body.

—the muddy rinse water
that once laundered court ladies' underwear
with rose soap.

—the sea
where, now, only seashells grown so worn and round, barlike arms, barlike legs, faces from which eyes and nose were washed away, featureless hearts and such lie deep at the bottom.

Ah, how far, how remote are
the water veins wasted, exhausted so.
The puffing of death
on bloodless cheeks.

Surely, now, no hair is left
on mankind's head.

Stabbing through the soft skin of the water,
suddenly, the tip of a needle is out.
A submarine.
Unable to bear the suffocation
it has come up to the surface, relieved.

To its very apex, in no time,
all the surviving nerves of the world gather and hear.
The news that both Asia and Europe
have become all bald.

20 April 1944 (2)