Poem
Yukio Tsuji
A TRAIN AND THE SLEETY WOODS
A train skirted the woods in the sleet.There were a few passengers,
and one of them
was looking at the sleety woods
with his face pressed against the pane.
That was the child I once was.
The child recalled those woods,
bleak, and the trees bare,
and wrote about it:
A tall man
was looking
at me
in the sleety woods:
oak
zelkova
birch
deutzia
magnolia
mountain cherry.
The man
in the sleety woods
under an umbrella
in a black coat.
was looking at me in the train,
The train puttered on
around the sleety woods.
And it is astonishing to know
that for that young passenger
to get to where he is now
took about forty years.
Cities, schools
and inner hell
somehow behind him,
somehow he has come through.
© Translation: 1998, William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura (Read by Don Mueller)
A TRAIN AND THE SLEETY WOODS
© 1993, Yukio Tsuji
From: Kakoh Chohboh
Publisher: Shoshi Yamada, Tokyo
From: Kakoh Chohboh
Publisher: Shoshi Yamada, Tokyo
Poems
Poems of Yukio Tsuji
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A TRAIN AND THE SLEETY WOODS
A train skirted the woods in the sleet.There were a few passengers,
and one of them
was looking at the sleety woods
with his face pressed against the pane.
That was the child I once was.
The child recalled those woods,
bleak, and the trees bare,
and wrote about it:
A tall man
was looking
at me
in the sleety woods:
oak
zelkova
birch
deutzia
magnolia
mountain cherry.
The man
in the sleety woods
under an umbrella
in a black coat.
was looking at me in the train,
The train puttered on
around the sleety woods.
And it is astonishing to know
that for that young passenger
to get to where he is now
took about forty years.
Cities, schools
and inner hell
somehow behind him,
somehow he has come through.
© 1998, William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura (Read by Don Mueller)
From: Kakoh Chohboh
From: Kakoh Chohboh
A TRAIN AND THE SLEETY WOODS
A train skirted the woods in the sleet.There were a few passengers,
and one of them
was looking at the sleety woods
with his face pressed against the pane.
That was the child I once was.
The child recalled those woods,
bleak, and the trees bare,
and wrote about it:
A tall man
was looking
at me
in the sleety woods:
oak
zelkova
birch
deutzia
magnolia
mountain cherry.
The man
in the sleety woods
under an umbrella
in a black coat.
was looking at me in the train,
The train puttered on
around the sleety woods.
And it is astonishing to know
that for that young passenger
to get to where he is now
took about forty years.
Cities, schools
and inner hell
somehow behind him,
somehow he has come through.
© 1998, William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura (Read by Don Mueller)
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