No. 32: Untitled 第三十二首 無題

No. 32: Untitled

Fatty fish swimming
Beneath deepening ice
Hunger pangs linger

…

第三十二首 無題

鰤泳ぐ
氷深し下
飢え尽きぬ

…

Dai sanjūni-shu Mudai

Buri oyogu
Kōri fukashi shita
Ue tsukinu

— Dean Bowman

About this Work

Author's Note: This poem serves as a companion to "Hunger," exploring the theme from a different perspective—where the obstacle is physical and metaphorical rather than monetary. It carries a socio-ecological dimension, hinting at the uncertainty climate change brings to traditional survival practices.

Inspiration: A documentary scene of a small community struggling with climate change and ice fishing struck me as a different lens for examining hunger poetically. It connected the theme back to our fundamental relationship with nature and seasonal cycles.

Process: This poem existed in my mind in the liminal space between Japanese and English—composed by both languages but belonging fully to neither. I've noticed that first and second lines come relatively quickly in bilingual poems, while the third line remains elusive, constantly reminding me never to force the creative process.

Translation: I've carefully aligned the Japanese and English versions of this haiku by weaving together seasonal nuance, cultural resonance, and poetic brevity. For the first line, I chose 鰤泳ぐ (Buri oyogu, "Fatty fish swimming"), using the kanji 鰤 for "buri," a winter delicacy in Japan that immediately anchors the poem in a specific season while evoking abundance beneath the surface. In the second line, 氷深し下 (Kōri fukashi shita, "Beneath deepening ice"), I employed the kanji 氷 (kōri, "ice") and the classical adjective 深し (fukashi, "deepening") to capture both the literal and metaphorical weight of winter's grasp. For the final line, 飢え尽きぬ (Ue tsukinu, "Hunger pangs linger"), I combined 飢え (ue, "hunger") as a call back to the poem of the same name with the classical negative verb form 尽きぬ (tsukinu, "does not end") to express a sense of persistent longing.

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