Mother Leads Us to the Wasteland Where We Settle Down (from 'WILD GRASS UPON A RIVERBANK') Poem by Hiromi Itō

Mother leads us along and we get on board
We get on and off again
Boarding cars and buses and planes
Then more buses and trains and cars

I am beginning to think this life will go on forever, it'll go on forever, but one day it stops all of a sudden, that day isn't especially different from all the others we spent aboard all those buses, trains, cars and airplanes, when we leave the airport just like always mother's smiling and there's a man in front of us, he presses his face which is covered with bushy jet-black whiskers against mother's face, he sticks his tongue in mother's mouth, wriggling it as it goes in, then he grabs mother's breasts, shoulders, stomach, and hips and gives them a hard squeeze

Mother makes little sucking sounds at the man's mouth

Closing his eyes, the man makes a little groan as he tastes mother's saliva, sniffs her scent, strokes her skin and her flesh, when the man removes his mouth he spreads his arms wide and says ohh mai ohh mai and hugs me and my little brother, he puts us into a gigantic car, the sky is blue here, it is really really blue, we drive for several hours, for several hours beneath the blue sky before we arrive at the big house in the wasteland, there's a sprinkler in the yard and it turns on at night

Ohh mai, it would soak everything in sight

Mother tells us where we will sleep then goes into the man's bedroom

At the crack of dawn, there's a loud noise, the sloshing noise of rinsing a mop in a bucket of water, the slippery sliding sound of scrubbing, the sound of mother's voice as if she's singing or breaking down in tears, this goes on for days and days on end, at first it wakes me up but with time I get used to it and don't get up anymore

During the day, mother uses words we don't understand to tell the man every teeny tiny thing my brother and I say, then they start talking to us in those same words, at first I've got no idea what they're talking about, but then with time I get used to that too

Then mother starts standing in unfamiliar stances, walking with an unfamiliar walk, cooking with unfamiliar foods, she makes us eat us her cooking, it's still good even if she used unfamiliar foods just because she made it, we realize we're gobbling up her food left and right

Mother leaves off an unfamiliar scent, that man is always at the dinner table, mother embraces and strokes us in unfamiliar ways, this sort of thing has happened before, mother would settle down with a man, she'd drag us into it, and every time we'd get dragged right in as if it were nothing at all

Mother doesn't go get on board anything anymore, we don't trail after mother any more or walk from airport to airport like our lives depend on it, one day that man uses an unfamiliar name to call out to mother, she responds as if nothing's the matter at all but she says she would take him to task

Who cares about a name as long as you've got one?
Words fulfill their usefulness as long as they get through
You two, mother said to us,
Let's not use Japanese any more

I am eleven, my little brother is eight
We stop speaking
But when we speak to each other or to mother
We continue to use nothing but Japanese
We stop speaking everything but Japanese
When people approach, we fall silent
When they leave, we start speaking again
We speak Japanese
Japanese is all we have
We speak only Japanese
I start pricking up my ears
My little brother does too
For years and years, we prick up our ears
One day I try asking my brother
Are you listening to something?
He answers
I can't hear anything
I try asking again
Are you listening to something?
He answers
I'm not listening to anything
We prick up our ears for years on end

One day when I wake up, there's a baby's car seat next to my pillow, and in it is a newborn baby, ohh mai gossh, a newborn baby, I ask, when did we get that? mother says yesterday, mother's belly is still swollen like she's still got more babies in her womb, babies to whom she hasn't yet given birth, the baby starts crying like a little cat, mother bares her breast, it's an altogether unfamiliar shape, it has swollen up and become dark and fierce, it smells so raw and fresh that I have to hold my breath, the little baby shifts its little head and starts sucking on it, mother takes out the other breast and exposes its heavy, swollen shape right before our eyes, she bends it, twists it, and breaks open the tip, the milk flies out in an arc, my brother screams eeewww, mother says try it, try sucking it, it's sweet, you'll be sure to like it, we hesitate, then mother grabs my little brother and forces it into his mouth, the breast looks much bigger and fiercer than my little brother's head, and mother looks still bigger and fiercer than that, the bubbling milk comes squirting from its smiling, split tip, with resignation my brother takes it in his mouth, mother squeezes and strokes it two or three times, I hear the sound of him swallowing one gulp after another, guroooss, he says, his mouth dripping with her white milk

The wind changes directions
So it blows from the desert
Dry as a bone
In the distance, a mountain burns
A mountain burns, raining down ashes
The ashes block out the sun
The sun watches with its naked eye
The plants turn to corpses
Dry as a bone
The sage releases its intense aroma
The rabbits and coyotes turn to corpses
Dry as a bone
When winter comes with its rain
All grows wet, moss grows, sprouts emerge, flowers bloom
The cacti and yucca grow long and lanky
Everything beneath heaven becomes a sea
Everyday the sun falls in the sea

Mother says, I'd like to start rowing, rowing over there to the other side of the sea, she says this in Japanese, but no one tells her to go, no one tells her to go home so she just stares at the sea

When we came here
I was eleven, my little brother was eight
Since then we've tried using Japanese
But the sounds that drip from our mouths
When just the two of us talk
Only emphasize how much we've forgotten
My little brother and I push sounds out our mouths
We push sounds out our lips and palates
We extract them from our noses, catch them on our tongues
We leak them out unintentionally
One day, my brother says
I've katto my finger
There's blood trickling from it
His words are a mixture
Of English and Japanese
One day, my brother says
Sis', what's my name? do you know?
I say to him
It's Zushio
My brother says
No one can say it, no one can pronounce it
No one can say my name at all
I repeat to him
It's Zushio
The baby grows bigger and begins blabbering baby talk
Saliva drips out of its mouth the whole time
Then before long it begins forming words
As if to deride my brother's distress

This all happened long ago
Mother led my brother and I along
And we got on board
We got on and off and on again
Boarding cars and buses then planes
Then more buses and trains and cars
We got on board
And began to move
Still, no matter how much we move
Our journey still does not end

Translation: Jeffrey Angles