Natsuko Hirata

Conversation with a sage at a desolate graveyard

               "Each different tones hidden in single color.
                      Let me show you maybe someday."

                                  "Maybe someday."

———Delphic.

             Soundless
                    chill air,
                         unburnt 
                             garbage,
                                  deliberate 
                                       delphinium,
                                             paisley 
                                                  venation.
 
   
                                  The grave stones
                             listen to the whispers, 
                     
                      and  see  
                   how breeze
               develops.

A mortician in August

Widower mortician has
no tea sets.

Systematically, brightly, orderly, friendly,
funeral hall
in August.

Reticent sunflowers are standing by
the Unknown Soldiers’ souls.

Who holds a funeral when
they die —— soldiers, the mortician?

He wants to be
dispersed.



Natsuko Hirata is a resident of Tokyo, She is the editor of Quince Wharf, an e-journal that includes translations into Japanese of poetry in English, and she has done translations of the work of Sandy McIntosh and Thomas Fink. She is learning poem writing under Thomas Fink. Her poetry has appeared in the Marsh Hawk Review, several issues of Otoliths, and BlazeVOX.
 
 
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