Still Life
Left behind on a corner of the table
A single empty bottle
Pleasure already gone
Reflecting the time when corpses transition —
Insipid space. Woman puttering around the kitchen,
Distorted window frame, clouds in the sky outside.
Midday clouds of nothing.
—
the first of three Ciné-poèmes (“Shine-poēmu sanpen”) by Kawaji Ryūkō, in Aishō 4, no. 12 (1929), 10–11.
translated (and analyzed) by Andrew Pasquale Campana in his Poetry Across Media in 20th-Century Japan (Harvard dissertation, 2018) : 38-39
dash (HUL institutional repository) : link
Kawaji Ryūkō (川路 柳虹, 1888-1959), poet (free verse, colloquial language), critic
wikipedia : link
Japanese wikipedia (better) : link
29 April 2026