This week for Translation Tuesday, Asymptote is pleased to present the lush poem “Gold Dust’s Sleep (Seven Fragments).” These fragments from Japanese luminary Yonezawa Nobuko revel in the fusion of concept and image in miniature. Inspired by the Symbolist tradition, Yonezawa’s poetry seems to refract the very words that make it up, allowing for subjective particulates to surface from the flow of experience and conspire with the reader. In this skillful translation, the concrete style of the original is maintained, so that the form of the stanzas themselves seem to impress a visual coherence and solidity to the movement of the language. As if struck with an afterthought, the poems end with suspended lines that evoke a response and an elaboration. With movement and the quotidian electrified, they breathe. 

Gold Dust’s Sleep (Seven Fragments) 

I

That moment, like the blind,
running
at full speed,
gently
gold dust was sleeping
the simple,
faded color of dreams.

II

Bare reality,
just a flower planted in a beaker.
Spotted as if with falling blood,
raw
gladiolus. READ MORE…