POEMS
Yamane Kazuyo, is a lecturer in peace studies at Kochi University. She is in charge of the International Exchange Section of Grass Roots House. She is a member of the PTLC Commission, and creates teaching materials for Peace Education. She sent us this moving poem written by Nishimoro Shigeo, the director of Grass Roots House, and the organizer of the peace trips to China, to study Japan's role as an aggressor against the Chinese people in World War II.
DRIED CUTTLEFISH ON A PERSIMMON TREE
When he was taken to China as a young soldier,
the first education was to stab a Chinese prisoner of war with a bayonet.
He was tied up to a persimmon tree and stabbed by forty-seven
Japanese soldiers who stood in a row one by one.
When N couldn't stab him, he was slapped on the cheek.
He was told, "Are you really a Japanese soldier?" in an angry voice.
He tried to stab him with set teeth closing his eyes.
He shivered and the point of the bayonet hit the air.
It grazed him.
The Chinese man was hanging like a dried cuttle fish by the time
forty-seven soldiers finished stabbing him.
N stabbed him with his eyes open for the second time.
But both times it was as if the sky was suddenly overspread
with dense clouds, and the thunder rolled.
We shouldn't do bad things, he murmured.
Whenever he saw a persimmon tree, it reminded him
of the Chinese young man.(Nishimori Shigeo, Partisan Before Dawn, Kochi: Grass Roots House, 1995, 74 - 175.)
Roger Horton tells us about the following poem that he met the Australian Aborigine Burraga Gutya, or Ken Canning (his European name), while walking back from dinner one night at an IPRA Conference in Brisbane. "At the poetry reading night a couple of days later I composed the poem on the spot and then was kindly allowed to read it to the assembled audience. I thought you may like to read it now and, if you think it worthy, publish it in the magazine."
Roger Horton:
FOR KEN CANNING (BURRAGA GUTYA)
I met this bloke last night.
We were going one way and he the other.
He said, do you know where I can find...
And he mentioned a name I'd heard
But didn't know.
Ah well, he said, he asked me for this.The he unfolded a sort of picture,
A piece of art really.
Yeah, this is the story of my people
They come from a bit north of here.
Well, we stood there nattering for a bit,
Swapping some yarns, but mostly
Listening to his explanations of what he'd drawn.
It was an image, a dream, a reflection
Of a people and the land in which they lived.I'm a magpie, he said,
Then flew from the picture
To stand there in his own story.
He's a man who has done time,
Been in gail -- escaped -- put in again.
Why? 'cause he tried to pay back
For the harm done to him and his people and the land.But our law isn't his law and our law won.
Well, he's okay now,
Found a different way, better way
To make his point.
He paints and he writes
And he tells his story to strange white fellas
He meets in the street and makes his brother.
The following poems are from the Israeli IFLAC Anthology: Waves of Peace: GALIM 8, in memory of Yitzhak Rabin (Hatikhon, Shfaram, 1997). The poems were translated from the Hebrew to English, by Ada Aharoni.
Ada Aharoni:
BIRTH PANGS OF PEACE
You were right Rabin -
innocent people fed with scrap-bones of lies,
like cruel jungle animals
fight against the vision of peace
as if it were a warYou were right Rabin -
and we, the mavericks of discussions
riding blind sacred cows,
forget with the swiftness of the wind
that time flows only in one direction.You were right Rabin -
when pregnant mothers
are killed
when praying men
are murdered -
frontiers melt.In this cursed, cursed war
in which you fell -
a new phoenix is born
breath-taking in its beauty,
lovingly nursed
by millions of tears
and songs of childrenNewborn Shalom suddenly
spreads its multi-colored wings
in the heart of Middle Eastern
golden sunshine and flies.
Fuaz Hussein:
MOURNING
Tears flow
and wet the autumn leaves
on cloudy winter
my eyes are shut
listening to the weeping
and people ask:
"What, who and how?"I will not see you anymore...
Always a devoted and cultivated family man.
The dove that fluttered in front of my window
in the midst of the night, is with the dawn
engaged.Please let me beg forgiveness
and hear my prayer shrouded in farewells...
May you rest in peace.
Sorrow and despair overflow my heart
it is natural for man to die...
but not this way...
oh my grief!
oh my pain!
the parting from you hurts and burns' my friend;
hurts and burns!
Amir Gilboa:
I OPENED MY DOOR
I opened my door
And many many crowded to come in.
I therefore pushed away
The walls of my room
To welcome all my guests,
And my room became the home
Of my comers,
And my room became the world.
Amir Gilboa:
IN THE DARK
If they show me stone
And I say stone
They say stone.If they show me wood
And I say wood
They say wood.But if they show me blood
And I say blood,
They say paint.If they show me blood
And I say blood
They say paint.
Yehuda Amichai:
ON YOM KIPPUR
On Yom Kippur in the year Tashkah
I wore dark festive clothes
and ambled to the old quarter
in Jerusalem.
I stood a long time
before an Arab's nook-shop,
not far from the gate of Shchem,
a shop of buttons and zippers
and rolls of thread
of all colours,
and tic-tacs and buckles.A bright light shone forth,
with many colours,
like an open tabernacle.
I told him in my heart
that my father too
had a shop like his
of threads and buttons,
I explained to him in my heart
about all the decades of years
and the causes and the events,
that I am now here
and my father's shop is burnt there
and he is buried here.When I finished
it was closing time.
He too pulled the blind
and locked the gate.
And went back home
with all those
who went to pray.
Erez Biton:
FALLEN SOLDIER IN THE MIDDLE EAST
A father (Jewish or Arab) mourning the death of his son.
And we, what are we?
Just wandering souls
Like foundations of crumbling housesAnd I wished that you’d be
An olive tree
That blossoms and promises fruit
That bears within it a riddle
Of ripe old age.
And I wished that you’d be
A palm tree
Rooted by the banks of flowing rivers.And I know they’ll all come now
To praise and persuade...
But all I wish for is that you be
That you be
Here
Leah Goldberg:
LONELY DRUM
They loved me very much
Until I was brought to the gallows,
They loved me very much,
But I was brought to the gallows.
They did not say if good or bad
The day I was taken to the gallows,
And so happened what happened
And I was brought to the gallows.Sole drum, sole drum
Raps in the town,
Lonely drum, lonely drum
To the end of town,
Lonely drum, lonely drum
Rolls in the road,
Today the dead will be buried
And nobody cries.I was brought to the gallows
The forests were silent,
I was brought to the gallows
The rivers were silent.
I was brought to the gallows
All the streets were silent
I was brought to the gallows
None came out of the houses.Sole drum, sole drum
Clamours in the town,
Lonely drum, lonely drum
To the end of the town,
Lonely drum, lonely drum
Rolls in the roads
Today the dead will be buried
And there is no shroud.
Shin Shalom:
WHEREVER I GO
Wherever I go I hear steps,
- My brothers on the roads, in swamps, in woods -
Burdened with darkness, trembling from frost.
Chased by flames, plagues and fears,
In rain, in snow, in storms, in tempests.Wherever I stand I hear knocks,
- My brothers in stocks, in desolates’ cells -
Walls separate and silences burst,
From generation to generation their echoes cry out
In the camps of torture, in the ghosts' graves.Wherever I lie I hear voices,
- My brothers carried, cattles to slaughter -
From my poker fire, from my islands ruin,
From the cities and towns - altars for sacrifices;
The howl of their loss terrifies my nights.My eyes cannot stop seeing them,
My heart cannot stop shouting: Abomination!
All of man will be summoned for their death,
All heavens above will still descend to lament them.
And the whole world a monument on their grave.