late Sachiko Yoshihara…
Power of Self-Dicipline
To The Gen Z’s
Ultimately as much as I wanted to,
I never succeeded in killing myself
not even once
It’s probably because, rather than to die
or to kill,
I ended up writing
But in that vein,
one must not replace living by writing
If you can save yourself from killing yourself by writing you want to kill yourself, then,
poetry is as useful as
medicine
But one must not stop living by writing
But one must not stop loving by writing
I’ve found that an actual flower is definitely lost poof gone as soon as I write “flower”
Likewise dragging my feet on writing paper makes my life insignificantly blithe
so I set out to walk around erasing my foot prints, only to find new foot prints following right behind me.
***
It’s actually addressed “To The Youth” of the time. The poem was prompted when Yoshihara served as one of the panalists/readers for a poetry contest for high school students. It is said that she was surprised and triggered by so many entries that expressed the teens’ anguish to want to die. Reading such entries from the students prompted her to write this poem.
自戒
わかものたちよ
わたしは一度も死ななかった
たぶん死ぬかわりに
殺すかわりに書いたからだ
死にたいと書くことで
死ななくてすむのなら
詩は薬のみたいな役に立つ
けれどその調子で生きるかわりに書いてはいけない
愛するかわりに書いてはいけない
花とかくとき
花はたしかに失われる
紙の上に足をひきずると
いのちはたしかにかるくなったので
私は足もとを消しに歩きまわる
すると私のうしろに新しい足あとが
またついてある
