Urn of August／八月の器

Urn of August


On an August afternoon,
being aware of her absence,
we the family who were left
are having lunch in a small room set in the mountains.
Just outside the room, her seventy-four summers are now
tuning into smoke, rising up high against the greenery,
and eventually vanishing into the sky.

“We’ll all turn into bones in the end.”
There is nothing new about it.
The girl who introduced me to Sakaguchi Ango’s work
may have told me that
during the summer I was falling in love with her.
“Don’t forget that we are flesh and blood after all.”
How could I forget that in that summer?

As if I were in a movie theater
and the door abruptly opened after the show,
I can see the remains of my mother’s story
still hanging there, going nowhere,
yet to be reduced to ashes.
Now her story has broken into pieces,
pieces no longer readable,
as we pick it up with her remains.

The mountains are so quiet
that we are not sure anymore
what we’ve done or if we’ve done anything at all.
The pieces of a seventy-four summer long story
are unrealistically light
inside the urn of August.

八月の器

八月の午後
そのひとだけがいない
まだ生きているぼくたちは
お昼をたべる　山の控え室で
七十四の夏が
煙になって高いところで
果てているあいだ

「死んでしまえば白骨になる」
あたりまえなことはつまらない
そんな安吾を教えてくれた
女の子に恋していた夏
そんなことが思い出される
「肉体をバカにしてはいけない」
そんな声も響いてきて
抱きしめることもできなかったくせに

みじかい上映が終わった劇場の
扉がふいに開かれるように
母の物語の
灰になりそこねた何かが
まだそこに横たわっている
山の係の人にうながされて
読むことのできない枯葉の断片を
みんなでひろいあげていく
器になにかが積みかさなっていく

八月の山はしずかで
ぼくたちは
なにを納めたのかわからなくなるが
さらさらの七十四のあたりまえを
納めたのだろう
やけに軽い
八月の器