Dad Poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa

Dad's eating, staring striaght ahead,
looking at no one.
My younder brother tells him
his glasses are all steamed up from the rice.
He says yes and wipes them on his sleeve.
Im not sure
what's on his mind
but I'm pretty sure it's not me,
or my brother or mother, either.
If I ask him what he's thinking
he'll just say, 'Nothing special.'
Once I say a photo of dad as a boy.
He was standing in the middle of a big field
squinting hard from the sun.
He still has that expression sometimes.
He holds on to a bite of yam with his chopsticks.
A gold tooth shows when he opens his mouth.
Dad, I hope you live a long time.

(Translated by William I. Elliott and Kazao Kawamura)