Kawasaki Hiroshi / 川崎洋 – Ⅲ
What I Secretly Say
I several times boasted
that if I could not make a living by writing
I’d do anything –
even shine shoes.
Now I’m not so sure
whether
I could really do shoe-shining.
A twenty-six year-old fishmonger
was talking on TV
about the time he decided to marry his present wife:
“ ‘I’d do anything
to give you and our children a comfortable life—
even be a beggar,’
I told her.”
Another man there about the same age
had said this:
“ ‘We’d have a poor, hard life, but
would you go along with me?’
I said,
and she said yes.”
Twenty years ago
I would have slapped my knee to what the fishmonger said,
and would’ve said ,
‘That’s great!’
Now
what those two men said
dazzles me.
An idea flashes across my mind
which, if my wife heard of it,
would make her keel over.
I may already have done in secret
what, if my daughter had known it,
would send her at me with a shovel.
And I have the surprising idea
that I am more normal now than before.
I several times boasted
that if I could not make a living by writing
I’d do anything –
even shine shoes.
Now I’m not so sure
whether
I could really do shoe-shining.
A twenty-six year-old fishmonger
was talking on TV
about the time he decided to marry his present wife:
“ ‘I’d do anything
to give you and our children a comfortable life—
even be a beggar,’
I told her.”
Another man there about the same age
had said this:
“ ‘We’d have a poor, hard life, but
would you go along with me?’
I said,
and she said yes.”
Twenty years ago
I would have slapped my knee to what the fishmonger said,
and would’ve said ,
‘That’s great!’
Now
what those two men said
dazzles me.
An idea flashes across my mind
which, if my wife heard of it,
would make her keel over.
I may already have done in secret
what, if my daughter had known it,
would send her at me with a shovel.
And I have the surprising idea
that I am more normal now than before.