Shuntaro Tanikawa
Hi There
One of the trees in the big forest
called out, “Hi there,”
but none of the others answered,
except — in a kitchen far away
a cutting board fell from a shelf.
The sieve laughed at this;
the clay pot didn’t move,
but the butcher knife shivered, remembering
a slash at a girl’s finger last night.
The tree doesn’t know
how the knife got drunk
on that gush of blood.
(Translated from the Japanese by Yorifumi Yaguchi and William Stafford)
