Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu, previous recipient of a PEN American Center Translation Fund Grant. This selection is from Time of Sky / Castles in the Air, forthcoming from Litmus Press in 2010 as a double-book translation.

from Time of Sky

1.
Blood always blood
As blue is blue
Incessant explosion of a thirst-ripened orange

2.
A kiss on the fountain that grows pigeon-like anywhere upon the trembling mirror that exposes itself

3.
The innocent window
Flung inwards
And further in
Screams are forced to run radiantly and full speed

4.
Don’t call
Don’t bundle the yellow lilies that fly about
Don’t eavesdrop on the egg

5.
I discover a newly drowned body amidst the geometric scene welling up in the sky of my eyes

6.
The peninsula
The rail
The exploded branches
The breasts
The netting
The white plate—
Fly!

7.
Because the blue sky is so swift
I must lap up the lukewarm blood seeping into the mirror

8.
The Morpho butterfly
Who crosses over
Lighter than semen
Snatches what away
From an eye called an eye

9.
A transparent clock is constructed while being kneaded by the foul breath of things which sprout

10.
A scream inside a fish
A table is a table
The raped orange becomes the blue sky

11.
Tumbling recklessly while mincing the surroundings is a wound or an ear or the yellow lily

12.
The pigeon
Does not grow any lighter than that
Does not go dark
Draws yellow on the spine

13.
The woman who drank the glass window will have a seizure at dawn and tremble to her fingertips

14.
Hey
Let’s sound the organ and
Blow away the woods bulging with sparkling eggs

15.
Please give me the fishy stars born by the coral trees with black nostrils that inflate into the sun
 

Reprinted with permission of the translator. All rights reserved.