Life, Now

 
Now, each of us
stands guard over an unprotected life...counting each moment.
We are pursued relentlessly...by destruction's black shroud!


All around, only melancholy people, wounded people, famished people.
Gradually, an infinite uncertainty rushes toward us.


Such empty streets, such blue-drained skies...I have never seen before.
Oh, how carefully we huddle—afraid of losing our breath!


You know, I have some need for you,
I sense some calling behind me from you.
Some desire of mine wanders around you.


Without choosing, we are caught in a strange isolation's web.
Today, being alive feels to me like a kind of heartless, educated selfishness.
And you seem like...clusters of grief-stricken stories or something hazy.


You know, under death's whip-shadow, all humanity gathers today.
Leaving their workplaces...everyone is forced toward home, forced to stay...
To bring this compulsion...not much was needed,
only...a tiny microbe was required.


Those who transgress boundaries
perhaps become bound this way...to time,
...this is what I see happening today.
Even those who did not transgress are not free from such bondage today.
The sinner's punishment, it seems, some virtuous souls must also bear!


An indefinite leave from life's monotonous race,
yet even in this leisurely existence we cannot dance with joy.


The untouched corpse lying beside the city street—
like it, you or I or both of us may become—
perhaps not much time remains.


A smoldering sorrow spreads all around,
in the sun's city today, thick darkness's dust,
all dreams clinging to our eyes...grow dimmer day by day.


I no longer like staying alone without you.
Forgetting myself, I want to surrender to you,
how many days it's been since I've seen you...!


Such distance-living, my heart refuses to accept anymore.
Either you come to me, or let me go to you.


Tell me, why do you fear death so much?
I have no fear of anything, even going to you.
Such frightened love from someone—
I never wanted for myself.


Fine, go! You don't need to come, you stay alive.
In the future world, someone like you is needed most.
Live for ages, with health...
with the resolve to rebuild society anew.


I keep a pair of thirsting eyes open!...
Holding expectation's hand—when the world is reborn—you come to me!


These few days, I can write nothing, not even to you!
Every day, in sleep I only see my own image in the row of corpses!


My lifespan is gradually running out...perhaps not many days left...
Ah, if I could see you once! Just once!


I am, most likely, becoming ill or mad.
In every dead face's outline, I'm fitting the frame of my own form!


Will you come to me once? Or shall I come to you?
What if I die? What if we never meet? I'm so afraid!