By Thomas Page
The Untranslatable
This is a series of poems of words that do not directly translate into English. I have tried to capture the essence of the word in a poem.
In a train of a thousand eyes all jumping to the currents of the third rail
All seeking to rest on a vacant spot like the pigeons on the wire
Cooing and booing the world beneath them of tar and trash
Filled with the thousand feet darting to miss each other
In this pursuit of the individual
Which contains only the brain free of the thousands upon millions
All in the same boat but with different paddles rowing in different directions
Idle in the ship of fools’ idyll on a blustering ocean
That the light in their eyes don’t meet to make a spark that they are on this ship together
Cruising along at a snail’s pace without regard to the salt encroaching them
Thinking of the Coleridge’s hymnal that they sing in English lectures
Across this great land and your great land
The land of the darting eyes hoping to miss the matching pupils
That stop the haze seeping in to the tableaux.
Language: Japanese
Academy of the Heart And Mind 