Yasuhiro YOTSUMOTO (Japan) is a poet, essayist, literary critic and translator, living in Munich, Germany. His debut A Laughing Bug was published in 1991, followed by eight collections of poetry. His Afternoon of Forbidden Words (2003) won the Yamamoto Kenichi Award and Prisoner of Japanese the Ayukawa Nobuo Award. His works have been translated into various languages. He is the Japanese editor of Poetry International Web and is on the editorial board of the poetry magazine Beagle in Japan.
Mineral Dad
One morning, Dad turned to stone.
He just lay there on the bed,
no larger than a soccer ball, but so damn heavy,
even with the whole family pushing, we couldn’t budge him.
The stone’s surface with its smooth, black radiance,
looking closer: we found all these metallic flecks mixed in.
The next week, my stalwart Mom began to look for a job,
and on the eve of the forty-ninth day, in the bath,
she turned into Mariana Trench.
And today, today a forklift is tossing Dad into Mom.
(Translated by Jordan Smith)
四元康祐，日本詩人、隨筆作家、文學批評家和翻譯家，現居德國慕尼黑。首部詩集《大笑的臭蟲》出版於1991年，其後八本詩集相繼出版，其中《午後禁語》（2003）獲狄原朔太郎獎，《日本囚徒》獲鮎川信夫獎。四元康祐作品經翻譯成多種語言。他是Poetry International Web的日語編輯，也是詩歌雜誌Beagle的編輯。
父親礦石
父親變成了石頭
滾落在早晨的被子上
雖只有足球那麼大，分量卻很重
全家人都推不動
石頭表面光滑，散發黑光
仔細一看，還混雜著一些金屬顆粒
剛強的母親從第二週開始找工作
但在迎來七七四十九天的前一晚，她在浴室
變成了馬里亞納海溝
然後今天一輛鏟車把父親扔給了母親
（翻譯﹕田原、劉沐暘）