☀ Today's Poem: "Séance in Daylight" Yuki Tanaka

April 26, 2025

She opened her mouth as if her throat were a bird
ready to leave her. I thought she was going to sing

for the dead, because she said she always saw them.
I was cold. I snuggled against her like a tall cat.

When she put the petals of a hydrangea on my eyelids,
I heard rain pattering behind them,

and I was a window from which she saw her friends
return: lights lit inside them, now alive, now burning,

moths in a struggle to escape their own wings
edged with fire. She waved at them and spoke

through me, fogging my skin with words I couldn't hear.
I wasn't cold anymore, her breath so warm, her cheek

pressed against the fragile glass, which was my body.

from the book CHRONICLE OF DRIFTING / Copper Canyon Press

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Black-on-grey illustration of a quotation from Czeslaw Milosz's poem, Child of Europe, "Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire."

"He Won a Nobel. These Poems Show Him Finding His Voice."

"What does penetrate this work are Milosz’s longing for home and his resistance to the lures of exile. If this is not the book to begin an acquaintance with this serious poet, it’s good to have the old gap filled. Translation may be a mug’s game, but otherwise most of us would never know the poetry of those strangers speaking in foreign tongues."

viaTHE NEW YORK TIMES

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