THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

I thought about `now` which does not exist I thought about ‘now’.
I thought September `75 had not existed either the moment when
with our huge school bags on the shoulders we were unreal
as some snails on the field of withered roses at the front of the school.
And I thought why we had not died at once?
As one of the authors of the atomic bomb have said –
in physics unfortunately there are almost no proofs of nonexistence
equations die as well as people and cats die and get weaker
and lose their way and memory but I am still twelve years old
I fell asleep reading `The Mysterious Island` by the small table lamp
and the big bang by the corner of the street woke me up.

Everything is possible but why it is nothing which feels more real,
although unreal so much that it is hard to imagine it?
I thought about now which exists I thought even about the drops of rain
falling from the roses in Hiroshima. Now I thought about now
about the coat of black crows over the car looking for the place to sleep.

Translated by Barbara Inoue