Yomota Inuhiko-V

Gen. Regulus, Escorted Back to Carthage[1]

This beach

this sunset with which I sit face to face

the waves that keep striking, the jetty that’s wet with waves

the marble buildings that glint

the people, with the warships back, delighting noisily in trading things

many a bottle of spice and condiment laid out on the carpets on the wharf

looking at these, am I really this I?

The soldiers surrounding me

their lips roaring victoriously

looking at them up close, tormented by anxiety

is it I whose hands have just been freed from the ropes?

Carthage captured me again

they didn’t even declare death

the mercenary captain in armor and helmet with peacock designs on them

had a page take out a small pair of scissors

and was content to snip the muscles of both of my eyelids.

I was thrown out onto the beach boiling with joy

into the midst of base crowds where stone-rubbing words flew back and forth.

Things that are reflected in my eyes

I can no longer close:

the setting sun, the waves that roll in, the merchants

these are the last images on earth I see.

Neither the Artemis incarnate

nor my beloved children playing in the land I own

but the market spectacles that are in any coastal town:

merchants with their bottles and boxes laid out on their carpets

with hookahs in their mouths chatting with customers

a child chasing a dog, a dressed-up woman with her porter carrying a pot.

None of these barbarians know my fate

that my eyeballs will soon dry up and lose their light.

In the distance golden waves roll, the sunset is close at hand.

But my eyes won’t be able to ascertain the morning

when soft light shines on the sea again.

In no time a fierce flash of light will assault me

and everything will be left in the amorphous muddiness of light:

Waves rolling in and carpets, glass bottles and children

how peaceful and banal these last images are:

I collapse within the world’s indifference.

The eyes that salt was rubbed into begin to hurt,

eyes that have dried and begun to mist,

if I had any wish, it would be this:

This evening when I, having lost all, wander the streets,

would that tears be allowed to flow in my blinded eyes.

What kind of god would grant this small consolation?