Salad Anniversary
MACHI TAWARA
SALAD
ANNIVERSARY
Translated from the Japanese
by Juliet Winters Carpenter
PUSHKIN PRESS
LONDON
Contents
- Title Page
- August Morning
- Baseball Game
- Morning Necktie
- I Am the Wind
- Summertime Ship
- Wake-up Call
- Hashimoto High School
- Pretending to Wait for Someone
- Salad Anniversary
- Twilight Alley
- My Bisymmetrical Self
- So, Good Luck
- Jazz Concert
- Backstreet Cat
- Always American
- Afterword
- About the Publisher
- Copyright
August Morning
Always playing this song
you race along the seacoast road—
“Hotel California”
I watch you on your surfboard
poised between blueness
of sky and sea
Beach picnic for two—
thinking of egg sandwiches
never even touched
Sitting against a sunny wall—
your legs and mine,
parallel lines
On Kujukuri Beach
taking picture after picture
I may only throw away
Is there anything more?
More to believe, more to want?
Sprawled side by side on sand
Fat oval sun
can’t bear the burden
of its own weight
Under an orange sky on Kujukuri Beach
I snuggle up to you
in monochrome
The gentleness of lapping waves
makes me unafraid
to hear you say good-bye
You and I on the night beach
face to face in silence—
a sparkler softly sputters
Enjoying your hesitation,
I watch you hunt for words
to break the silence
Your left hand,
exploring my fingers one by one—
maybe this is love
This too a memory,
I leave it as it is—
dent in my straw hat
“Call again,” you say, and hang up—
I want to call again
right now
“Sorry,” I say lightly
as if to a friend—
Father just stares into his teacup
In the fitting room
I suddenly find my arms full
of floral prints you like
So huge
it gladdens my heart—
this store’s shopping bag
Happiness of standing before a grocer’s
at four in the afternoon
planning the supper menu
After you have gone
evening gathers in my heart—
all the scenery is you
Another Saturday of waiting for you.
Time spent waiting—
food a woman lives on
In the ballpark,
midday made before our eyes,
we shine
My team in a tight spot—
I look on somehow happy,
leaning against you
Your hand
signaling for a draft beer
catches my eye and absorbs me
On my birthday
a year seems short,
a day long
The rose blooms,
pretending not to know
that 400 yen made it mine
“Call me again” “Wait for me”
Your love is always spoken
in commands
Glancing up at the falling rain
suddenly I want
your lips
Escape from a shower into a street stall
and drink a glass of cheap saké—
fun to be alive
The woman in the street stall
calls me your wife—
and so, for a while, I am
At a tiny shop
like a child’s play store
I buy you a toothbrush
Warm—knowing
when I say “I’m cold,”
you’re there to say “Me too”
With the man I want to spend my life loving
my heart aches—
thinking of the slender margin
between unreal and real
“Today only!”
Red blouse in the window,
on sale each time I go by
You love boiled tofu for dinner.
Remembering,
I buy a little earthen pot
Cosmos flowers sway
in front of model homes
no one will ever live in
Pick up the receiver,
happy someone thought of me
in the middle of the night
Wednesday your words “See you”—
the same as ever
yet somehow not
On Thursday, wanting despite myself
to trust you,
I wear a psychedelic T-shirt
Unanswered ring tells me you’re still out
Where have you gone drinking?
Who’s getting drunk with you?
Thinking you too must be
listening to this radio show
I switch it off in mid-laugh
“It’s okay with me,” you say—
not understanding what’s okay,
I nod
I can’t believe you mean
all that counts is a good time—
do I know you?
Late afternoon—
you and I gaze at the same thing
as between us something ends
Sitting in a coffee shop
with a man who isn’t you,
making him say, “Then I’ll wait five years”
Lights at dusk
in Heartbreak Hotel—
a place you sang of once
Remember the August morning
you started up the engine
and carried me away?
Like getting up to leave
a hamburger place—
that’s how I’ll leave
that man
Like a whiskey bottle on reserve too long
that man’s no longer mine—
skies are clear today
It’s enough to be your lover
sings someone in a song,
making it sound so easy
Now that I wait for you no more,
sunny Saturdays and rainy Tuesdays
are all the same to me
Baseball Game
Wrapped in a green sweater
as though folded deep in your arms—
winter comes on
On a Sunday morning
fragrant with navel oranges,
I boil two eggs to perfection
I check my tear-stained reflection,
remembering that you said
“Stay beautiful”
More than dozens of words of love,
one chill word
preoccupies me
Knight in leather jacket
astride your motorcycle,
for you let the sunset blaze!
Underline the words
hard enough to tear the page—
“to love and not have faith”
Eating takeout sushi with you,
only 300 yen—
tastes so good I know I’m in love
Shielded by you in a crowded train,
I gaze up close
at fine down on your face
Every time I look at the public bath wall,
three of them lined up for sale—
“ear-cleaning sets”
With you, for better or worse,
even when I’m gargling
I feel like a woman
Longing to see
the ocean in December,
we board the Romance Express
A day playing at Enoshima Beach—
you have your future, I mine,
and so we take no snapshots
Grieve with me—
the sureness of your touch
catching Frisbees
is missing in this romance
Throwing stones in the waves,
he never looks my way—
young man wild like the sea
I cherish the bit of crimson
staining your finger
as you open a raw oyster for me
Skeptical of promises,
you don’t even bother
to build your castle away from the waves
“Machi-chan”—
I like the moment he hesitates
before using my pet name
The smell of you dances on the salt breeze
and in your arms
I turn into a seashell
“Marry me,”
after two canned cocktails—
are you sure you want to say that?
Head cradled in my lap like a child,
lonely vagabond
you breathe quietly, asleep
Five-thirty p.m.—
you and I walk on sand, kissing
under the eye of Mt. Fuji
“I was born to run,” you say—
for you who have no hometown
I want to become the sea
“I’m going to go feel the winter waves,”
I say, and walk away—
unable to meet your gaze on the beach
Unable to accept this love—
walking back at the hour
when big hand and small hand overlap
Don’t forget
the broken wing of the airplane
we buried together in sand
Loneliness drifts down in December—
in my life, one plus one
forever makes two
Ancient love poems
touch my heart this evening—
to each one I give a star
Using your hairbrush
to brush my hair
I savor your male smell
A morning of waiting for you—
at four, at five-thirty, again at six,
I check the alarm clock dial
“Till I’m thirty
I’ll stroll through life,” you say—
what scenery am I to you, I wonder?
Evening, and I wonder—
how long was her hair?
the girl who lived in this room with you
Aren’t you cold?
Alone, hanging in midair,
you float through life unattached
River of taxis
at two a.m.—
crosswalk fast asleep
“Today the public bath was closed.”
I want to spend every day
talking of little things like that
Knowing the smallness
of a man who thinks only of me,
I still can’t help wishing you would
“Today makes exactly 500 days
since we met,” he whispers—
surprised, I jump away
Like snow drifting down
from where my mother lives—
loneliness in Tokyo
February begins—
for the next two months,
everything a memory
For some reason
it is woman’s lot to know
people cannot live on love
In Yokohama’s Chinatown
perhaps for the last time—
buying a smile-shaped cookie
Cooking an omelet
flavored with tears
of coming morning and farewell
Valentine’s Day away from you—
I spend the day
like the priestess of a shrine
Realizing that was the night
of our first kiss,
I shut my diary with a bang
You hold me tight,
as if I were going far away—
March, the month of good-bye
In March, my heart indifferent
to the coming spring,
I gaze with you at late plum blossoms
Unable to say what waits to be said
this early afternoon,
we focus on the baseball game
Two outs, bases loaded—
you crouch, tense, as if it were
a major life crisis
Passing each other on escalators
headed in opposite ways—
happy to be with you if only for a moment
Around the unbending telephone pole,
no blossoms to scatter or bud,
spring breezes play
As a monument to my youth
I hang at my window
a plant called “bridal veil”
Morning Necktie
Set off to see for myself
my father’s name
carved in a Tohoku museum
Once the “world’s strongest,”
my father’s magnet
crouches on a shelf
Monday morning
the head of the Magnetic Research Institute
picks out his necktie
My father, perfectly at home
with rare earth elements,
loves Modigliani women
“Writing more love poems?”
half humorously
half anxiously
His present—
Sanuki noodles—
comes stuffed in a company envelope
Something warm in the way
he calls his wife “Mother”
without the least hesitation
He wipes his face with a hot towel
and sighs contentedly—
looking at him now I see an ordinary man
Moving away from the telephone
he sips his tea as if to say
“I’m not listening”
Forgiven
their inability to express tenderness—
men of my father’s generation
I Am the Wind
A letter overflowing with love
love that belongs
to the date on the postmark
I finish writing, put on the stamp,
and time begins to flow
toward the moment of your answer
Signaling the start of my vigil,
it stands sharply at attention—
corner mailbox
You have your Saturdays, I know—
mine are spent
pretending not to notice
Turn down my fourth invitation.
Sundays I do nothing—
this day belongs to me
Beneath your hard-bitten ways
I see a boy—
his skies are wide and blue
Floating together down the spring street—
this afternoon I want
to be seen by everyone
I don’t leap before I look—
look for what, anyway?
just slide along in life
Eyes shut, face buried in your beer mug,
you don’t even look at me—
what is it that you thirst for?
Two more hours
and I turn into Cinderella—
you go on about nuclear war
After this nuclear war you speak of,
turn with me, in the ruins,
into a flowing stream
“You have a bone to pick with me,
don’t you?”
arbitrarily you say—
maybe I do, at that
A break in the rainy season—
the ragman making his rounds.
Won’t you trade my memories for
a pack of pocket tissue?
Thursday afternoon
I twirl the dial,
just to make a noise in your room
“I’ll die at thirty,” you say,
and I in turn decide
not to die till then
Eighty kilometers an hour—
clinging to your back, I am the wind—
now there is only my arms around you
On her neckline the trace
of last year’s bathing suit,
she hears the ocean call
Told “I want you, Machi-chan”
my heart wants to follow him—
like children playing a game
Only eighty years to live—
yet the “whys” of twenty-one
resist everything
This 365-faced polyhedron, my self—
let it flee flow fly apart,
take off!
“When you get around to it.”
Knowing you will never call
I take revenge in a sugary voice
Rise, pale sun—
this autumn premonition
of losing you
There is one who loves me
randomly—a “me”
that isn’t me at all
If no one wants you
by the time you’re twenty-nine
give me a call, I made him say
Like someone from another planet—
but not really—
a friend whose surname changed
from Maeda to Ishii
Ill effects of low blood pressure—
no more worrisome
than my daily horoscope
At the end of day they lie on my finger,
slightly clouded—
contact lenses
Really, you see everything
don’t you now,
I whisper to the small, round lenses
Scrub my contact lenses hard
as if washing off the soil
of what they’ve seen
Bought a chatty birthday card—
a swarm of words
to cover the blank in me
What are you doing,
what are you thinking?
A romance made up of questions
is only a lifeless shell
Junk mail it may be
but still this postcard cheers me—
autumn evening
Waiting for your call—
wondering just how drunk you were
when you said those things to me
Ring after ring tells me you’re out—
I listen fondly,
grateful for any clue
Spaces in my appointment book
I’d been saving for you—
I fill them in, in pencil
Unable to make even one love mine,
I chew idly
on overcooked cauliflower
At my side
you liken our relationship
to me and my potted parsley
In Yokohama,
atop Harbor-Viewing Hill,
we probably look like lovers
Like lingering to watch a street pantomime
and gazing for a moment
into the performer’s eyes
Van Gogh exhibit—
move from one painting to the next,
seeing in the glass just my own face
Your memory of that day—
a day you say changed your life—
has nothing to do with me
Evening, and I wish
you and I were anatomical models
labeled simply “human”
“I want to eat, and not gain weight!”
So goes the commercial.
I want to be loved—
and not to have to love
I turn up the volume all the way,
listening to the Southern All Stars—
all around, everything is weeping
Summertime Ship
Slowly, like the earth waking,
it starts to move—
summertime ship
Amid torn paper streamers
in the summer wind
I sail for Shanghai aboard the Jianzhen
On the dark blue surface
of the East China Sea—
only sky, only waves
“All the lies you ever told
don’t really mean a thing,”
the ocean seems to say
Each one on deck with a private breeze,
a private time when conversation
isn’t wanted
Suddenly wonderful—
that each tiny islet from my porthole
should have a name
Beer on the table tilts in the glass—
that’s right, I’d been forgetting:
East China Sea
Bearing a wind that calls me inland,
color of milk caramel—
Yangtse River
A little Chinese girl
dances in court costume
like a windless summer day
“Detour!”
Lively, glittering Shanghai streets,
crammed with bicycles and men at work
Bottles of Tsing Tao beer cry out
as the truck zooms round the corner—
Shanghai
Must be getting fond of this place—