Machi Tawara
From Salad Anniversary (1987) 
Quentin S Crisp reading poems by Machi Tawara 
1824.4 KB
Play - Right click here and select save to download the audio file.
Just a Thursday afternoon
wanting to set off the bell in your room
and turning the dial of the phone.
A birthday I spend thinking
how a whole year is so short,
a single day so long.
Lunch on a sandy beach.
An egg sandwich left untouched
bothers me somehow.
“Isn’t it cold?” you say.
“It’s cold all right,” comes the answer.
And with someone to answer comes warmth.
“Phone me again,” you say
and put down the receiver.
And I want to phone you again
right now.
We walk along the sandy beach
and kiss
while a 5.30 p.m. Mount Fuji looks on.
A loneliness like snow
falling from the land where my mother lives.
Here I am, in Tokyo.
The dent I notice
in the tube of toothpaste
after you have gone
is new this morning.
A sea that seems to say
all the lies I have told in my life
don’t matter one bit.
Quentin S Crisp studied Japanese at Durham University and has researched Japanese literature at Kyoto University. He has had two volumes of short stories published, The Nightmare Exhibition (BJM Press 2001) and Morbid Tales (Tartarus Press 2004).
With special thanks to Mami Fukaya
Translated by Quentin S. Crisp
Page(s) 25-26
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The