|
Opposition |
| In my youth |
| I was opposed to school. |
| And now, again, |
| I'm opposed to work. |
| Above all it is health |
| And righteousness that I hate the most. |
| There's nothing so cruel to man |
| As health and honesty. |
| Of course I'm opposed to 'the Japanese spirit' |
| And duty and human feeling make me vomit. |
| I'm against any government anywhere |
| And show my bum to authors' and artists' circles. |
| When I'm asked for what I was born, |
| Without scruple, I'll reply, 'To oppose.' |
| When I'm in the east |
| I want to go to the west. |
| I fasten my coat at the left, my shoes right and left. |
| My hakama I wear back to front and I ride a horse facing its buttocks. |
| What everyone else hates I like |
| And my greatest hate of all is people feeling the same. |
| This I believe: to oppose |
| Is the only fine thing in life. |
| To oppose is to live. |
| To oppose is to get a grip on the very self. |
| Kaneko Mitsuharu |
Translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite
taken from 99 Poems in Translation: An anthology, eds, Harold Pinter, Anthony Astbury and Geoffrey Godbert, London, Faber and Faber, Greville Press, 1994.
