SABURO KURODA
Translated by MARIANNE TARCOV
THE
BET
What would a poor guy like me do with a bride
even if she came with a
five million yen dowry?
Buy a piano, drink some sake,
steal a kiss behind the
curtains.
Is that it?
What would a drunk like me do with a wife,
even if she positively
shone with beauty and virtue?
Hold her in one hand like a new silk hat
I don’t know what to do with.
Is that it?
At that moment,
the world was silent
as the grave.
From the second floor of that white
building,
I saw
a level of stupidity
that just about equalled mine,
a poor,
stubborn,
weather vane,
with Jacobsen’s rose in
her buttonhole
and a suspicious
sorrow in each eye,
spitting out curses
like grape pits.
I saw
deep dimples on each
side of her mouth:
a girl.
With a world, an era
at stake in this
game,
what do I have to bet?
I turned my pockets inside out:
the marriage proposal
that will get me my dowry,
my poet’s laurels, my
unpaid bills,
loose buttons—
I threw it all out there
and realized,
shaking my wallet up and
down,
there’s nothing here worth
betting
except
my own
destruction.
The world subsided back to a deathlike
stillness,
and like an
inexperienced gambler,
I opened my tightly shut eyes.
AUTUMN
DAY AT THREE
Sitting on a bench by Shinobasu
Pond,
I sneak open a flask of whiskey.
In her best dress,
little Yuri gallops
across the white sand
and, tracing a circle,
comes back.
From far away, a sea lion cries in its
insane voice,
“Kwak kwak kwaaaa!”
Little Yuri comes back
imitating it.
Autumn day at
three.
The opposite bank swarming with ducks,
scattered with human
figures.
The faint sound of
a car horn.
Everything’s so far away.
Like infinitely distant worlds,
I see two shadows next to each other on the
white sand,
a father skipping
work and that little daughter of his.