She was on some sort of a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control. Since she was from Okinawa, she needed help in improving the flow of her English on the page. She had gotten her doctorate from Hiroshima University. She was, I learned, as gooseflesh crawled up my neck and arms, an acquaintance of a Hibakusha with whom I was more than vaguely familiar, the poet Sadako Kurihara.
Before long, my pupil shared with me Kurihara's most famous poem. "New Life" evoked what living through hell was like. When I read the English version, out loud, I intuited that parts of it were not exactly satisfactory, as translation, to my new friend and English student; she wrote down some suggestions for me in this regard.
We talked this over on several occasions, and the result was that I rewrote Kurihara's stanzas according to more graphic and heartfelt specifications. For better or worse, this exercise implanted in me anew an inextricable commitment. The power of these verses makes me refer to them again and again, to wit:
New Life
Night--pressing on a broken building's basement
Filled with sprawling, wretched A-bomb victims--
Darkened the feeble candles which were the only light
To show a room overflowing with bodies
More broken even than their housing.
Sweat and blood and death subsumed my nose,
While moans and keening cries for mercy
Battered my ears with dose after dose after dose
Of the writhing pain that suffused me and all I touched,
Until I thought, "we all must die."
Suddenly, in this basement turned to living hell,
A young girl's voice sounded and transformed the suffering.
Wonder filled, she said, "The baby's coming!" and thus, still,
In spite of everything, a young woman's labor caused all to forget
Their own pain because a newborn might come forth to save us yet.
What could we do, though, having not even matches
That might decrease the forbidding darkness of our end?
From a woman's form that had tossed and turned in agony,
Whose wails had punctuated the fetid dirge of our deathsong,
Came simply this: "I am a midwife."
"Before I die, I can bring her child to life," she said with a sigh.
The truth of her promise quite quickly came to pass, and
A new child emerged in the inferno's smoke and smolder,
While the midwife, her wounds still weeping blood,
expired upon my shoulder.
Her promise is the one we live by still.
Even in the fires of hell, as life's blood seeps away,
We will bring forth new life, even unto death.
With birth to tie ourselves to Earth even as we go,
Life is our vow, life is our will.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
