DEATH • MY DEATH Poem by Kazue Shinkawa

More readily than a ribbon in your hair
my outline will come undone.
What puff of wind,
what sway of flame,
what sound of voice
will readily undo this knot?

Invisible
but it's right there,
like a sense,
always, right there.

*

In the innocuous color of iced strawberries,
when and where did the snapdragon
learn the smell of human death?
Emitting a sweetly sour odor,
it drops its flowers late at night thump thump.
What a
frightful frightful spectacle!
Who taught this babyish child
the secret rite of grownups?

*

Like the pond water in early spring
I wait with a smile on my face.
At times a titmouse or stonechat flies in,
spills a silverberry from the tip
of his beak.
A ring spreads.
The silverberry sinks.
Which of them will death be:
the ring that goes on spreading
or the substance that rots at once?