A POET-ANIMAL
Because I am a man long ago forsaken by human beings,
I live on earth, together with the hearts of dogs similarly abandoned.
I will never wage war either for justice or against evil
and I cowardly shut my eyes to love.
I willingly laugh at obscenity and worry not a bit over misery,
and live shitting and pissing everywhere.
Because I am a man who long ago despaired of human beings,
I live surrounded by trash, junk, things of no use,
despising all utility.
Being neither a merchant nor a salaried worker, nor a manufacturer,
that is, not a fraud, not a liar, not a thief, just a ‘Nobody’,
I hide among garbage and junk and such useless things and live as I like in a deserted
house of the soul.
© 1994, Toshio Nakae
From: Kitaijyou (A Gaseous State)
Publisher: midnight press, Tokyo, 1994
© Translation: 2007, William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura