Cool Announcement: Fumi Saito's White Letter Poems for International Women's Day

My Dear Readers:

In celebration of International Women's Day, I am pleased to introduce you to White Letter Poems by Fumi Saito, translated by Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold. "Fumi Saito's tanka, with its colorful energy and romantic implications, has had a special appeal to generations of young readers."

"Fumi Saito is one of the most highly respected tanka poets in today's Japan. Daughter of a military officer who was also noted for his verse-writing talent, she began writing poetry in the traditional 31-syllable tanka form in her early teens. Her first book of tanka, titled Fish Songs, published in 1940, immediately established her as a brilliant young poet.  She was inducted into the Japan Art Academy in 1993 and invited to serve as meshiudo (a position similar to the Poet Laureate's) at the Imperial Palace in 1997."

Selected Tanka

coming to a hill
I unfurl my white arms
to become a sail
the vigorous wind is
the song of a sea robber

remote spring
sinking to the lake bottom
to myself
a celebration of the flute
playing as I meet myself

cut off from spring
on a white trajectory
he jumped
and seemed to wave a hand
but finally never came home

a bullet was fired
in the center of his forehead
yet his face
still moving as it haunts
this eerie summer!

long dead
the bones of a beast
decaying tonight
I am nearly choked
as cherry blossoms are falling

breast-feeding
a gesture of something
beast-like
pitiful to think tenderly
that it is called a child

a white hare
from a snow-covered mountain
when it came out
it was killed
with eyes still open

when a petal
is laid on its back
how heavy
the leg chains
on the zoo elephant

a husband paralyzed
my old mother blind
on both sides
this evening of life
I enter autumn

passing day by day
the place where one has gone
the loneliness
in the summer of other times
an autumn cicada shrills

though now old
a woman is still a woman
as a breeze
to a summer bamboo screen
come to visit me