9. 24. 2023
“Inspiring Words”
& “Scallion Flowers”
Shibuya Teisuke
Translated by Adam Kuplowsky
Inspiring Words
“Fuck the police! Pay them no mind!”
I can still recall those inspiring words
spoken from the lips of Ms. S—
…and those shining eyes!
…and that passionate voice!
“Fuck the police! Pay them no mind!”
A March night at the village shrine
A festival underway; cherry-blossoms in bloom
I was carrying hundreds of leaflets
to distribute
to all of my comrades
Scallion Flowers
Everything Everything
is jumbled up inside me!
Harried by fieldwork and silkworms
I am utterly deprived
of even the little time left
after my evening chores
Radish flowers after midnight
Scallion flowers in the moonlight—
How I envy your freedom!
Not knowing what to do next
I wander exhausted
like a sleepwalker in the garden
Shibuya Teisuke (1905-1989): Japanese poet, farmer, and activist. In 1926, he published his first and only collection of poetry, 野良に叫ぶ (Shouting in the Fields), which he dedicated to the memory of the Ukrainian serf-poet Taras Shevchenko. Despite his enormous impact on Japan’s rural poetry movement, he abruptly withdrew from Japan’s literary scene to commit himself fully to socialist and farmers’ rights causes.
Adam Kuplowsky is a translator based in Toronto. He recently translated the anarchist tales and fables of Vasily Eroshenko from Japanese and Esperanto for Columbia University Press (The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales, 2023).
The poems above are published with the kind permission of Fujimi City Library (Saitama, Japan), which holds the rights to Shibuya Teisuke’s works.
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- What We Mean by Community is Our Yearning for Communism M.E. O’Brien on family abolition and the communizing of care as political horizons worth fighting for. A conversation with Midnight Sun editor David Camfield.
- Protest & Pleasure: A Revolution Led by Sex Workers A conversation with Monica Forrester, Toni-Michelle Williams, and Chanelle Gallant about why trans women of colour sex workers are the leaders we need, lighting the way to revolutionary horizons.
- Festivals of the Possible Megan Kinch on the Occupy movement, which erupted 10 years ago: its particular blend of spontaneity, organization, and technology; the forms it took in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada; and its mixed legacies. A personal and political reflection.