Hot Late Summer
What to do with the rose in my garden,
this remaining rose?
I ended up looking at the abandoned garden.
My old mother, senile, asleep,
carelessly showed it
because of the unusually humid heat past noon
with no autumn wind to stir the blinds.
The withered gate that couldn’t possibly have
anyone to wait for or to visit
was not so much obscene
as openly, casually, innocent.
Having hurried past the verandah outside her chamber,
I wipe the sweat that covers my skin.
The heat of this year, this crazy heat.
What to do with the rose in my garden,
this private rose?
,
by Kazue Shinkawa
from Hiyu dewa naku
Publisher: Chikyusha, Tokyo, 1968
translation: Hiroaki Sato
from Not a Metaphor
P.S., A Press, Middletown Springs, VT, USA, 1999