One Day
by Hideo
Yokokawa
Getting up early this morning,
I found the remaining four tanagos
floating on the water surface, dead
in the water tank on the side table in my dining
room.
Helpless.
I put the corpses into the trash box
in the kitchen sink.
How many, hundreds of fishes in heaps,
have lived and died in this glass vase?
Changing the water and cleaning it,
I happened to think
I would cultivate only the pure water
in this vase from now on.
Then all of a sudden,
a chill ran through my back and shrouded
the whole of my body.
Getting back to myself,
I thought of nature.
Fish in the water.
Flowers on the ground.
Clouds in the sky.
Yes, I will fill the vase again with
10 tanagos tomorrow
for celebrating the joys of living.
NB: tanago
Small silvery
freshwater fish,
3 cm largest even when grown up..
(32)