Natsuko Hirata



The port at dusk


He lost one leg.
Yet he rode a bicycle very well for selling fish.
Nobody knew his artificial leg was not...
——A defeated nation.

His daughter was running after the bicycle.
She counted every single day's change.
Good at calculation.

60 years later:
"But it was really fun!"
——For friends in port town.



The final place


                    Murky afternoon
                              midtown rain.
                    When we were
                    cats or waves
          at a building landing
      Venus drew a bow.


——Adagio.


My body was carried midair.
          Paganini's violin
               nobody heard.


          Finally
               we met
                  a quiet gate
                     at a scorching
                              slope's top.



Natsuko Hirata is a resident of Tokyo. She is the editor of Quince Wharf, an e-journal that includes translations into Japanese of poetry in English, and she has done translations of the work of Sandy McIntosh and Thomas Fink. She is learning poem writing under Thomas Fink. Her poetry has appeared in the Marsh Hawk Review, Otoliths,and BlazeVOX .
 
 
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