Poem

Shinjiro Kurahara

Side by side

A Footprint

Long ago
a fox ran along a clay river bank.
After an interim
of tens of thousands of years
a footprint turned fossil remains.
Looking at it, you'll see
what the fox was thinking while running.

© Translation: 2010, Mariko Kurahara, William I. Elliott, Katsumasa Nishihara
From: Iwana
Publisher: Dowaya, Tokyo, 2010

(dictated by the author on his deathbed)

足跡

ずっと昔のこと
一匹の狐が河岸の粘土層を走っていった
それから
何万年かたったあとに
その粘土層が化石となって足跡が残った
その足跡を見ると　むかし狐が何を考えて走っていったのかがわかる

（口述）

Shinjiro Kurahara

(Japan, 1899 - 1965)

Shinjiro Kurahara was an artist of multiple genres – he sketched, wrote short stories, and later in life devoted himself to poetry, publishing six volumes. Kurahara’s poems are at once elegant and stark, simple and possessed of a comforting depth. His poetry has attracted renewed attention in recent years with the release of Iwana (‘Char’), a bilingual edition of his final works, in 2010. ...

Countries

Discover other poems and poets from Japan

Poems Poets

Languages

Discover other poems and poets in Japanese

Poems Poets

Poems

Poems of Shinjiro Kurahara

A Footprint

Long ago
a fox ran along a clay river bank.
After an interim
of tens of thousands of years
a footprint turned fossil remains.
Looking at it, you'll see
what the fox was thinking while running.

（口述）

A Footprint

Long ago
a fox ran along a clay river bank.
After an interim
of tens of thousands of years
a footprint turned fossil remains.
Looking at it, you'll see
what the fox was thinking while running.