The X-ray Photo of My Hand (Poem)

The X-ray Photo of My Hand

by Tadami Yamada

Recently my left hand was injured a little bit

Nothing serious, but I'd a doc to make sure of it

The doctor said, " You ought to have a X-ray taken

For a possibility heavier than it looks, plain-spoken"

The X-ray photograph of my hand I saw first time

O what I say? as a painting artist, as a god's mime

Thinking the fruits in hand to be lost under the knife

White bones in black, the image of death and life!

My hand on photo was as if it showed adumbration

Like a ghost that suddenly appeared in dark ocean

Or also like a raft steering through the rough seas

White bones were constructed in closely; no disease

The white raft of bones drifting about dreamlands

Surely returned to "canvas" to check the life's sands

Countless drift any longer, panting under heavy load

Sometimes I felt like crying, or finding life's road

Or I imagined woods of bones in the dark of flesh

That would be remained after my body would perish

Then the situation of between life and death reverse

Life's sustained by own internal death from the birth

I came to the principal of nature, the truth of cosmos

O yes! Cosmos, there was not any antagonism of animus

The doctor said,"Let's cure patiently". I cought my breath

I'll go on to work picture in the valley of life-and-death 

                                                                                            (2009)