The same as stacked lunchboxes
this Japan, narrow and confined.
From this corner to that corner, meanly and stingily
all of us are being counted up.
And, unlimited rudeness,
all of us are drafted-stupid idiots.
Birth certificates, they ought to be burned right away.
Nobody should remember my son.
My son,
be concealed away inside this hand.
Hide away for a while underneath a hat.
Both your father and mother in the house at the foot of the mountain
have talked about it all night long.
Soaking the withered forest at the foot of the mountain,
making sounds like twigs breaking, crackle, crackle,
the whole night rain was falling.
My son, you are soaked wet to the skin
carrying a heavy gun, gasping for breath,
walking along as if fallen into a trance. What place is it?
That place is not known. But for you
both your father and mother go outside to search aimlessly.
The night hateful with only such dreams,
the long anxious nighttime, at last ends.
The rain has let up.
In the sky vacant without my son,
well, how damnably disgusting,
like a shabby worn-out bathrobe,
Fuji!
(Mitsuharu Kaneko)
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