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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tada Chimako
Tada Chimako
Born in 1930 in Kita-Kyūshū City, Fukuoka, Japan, Tada Chimako spent most of her youth in Tokyo, during the tumultuous years of the second World War...
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FURTHER READING
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Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
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Mirrors

 
by Tada Chimako
translated by Jeffrey Angles

The mirror is always slightly taller than I
It laughs a moment after I laugh
Turning red as a boiled crab
I cut myself from the mirror with shears

*

When my lips draw close, the mirror clouds over
And I vanish behind my own sighs
Like an aristocrat hiding behind his crest
Or a gangster behind his tattoos

*

Oh traveler, go to Lacedaemon and say that in the mirror,
Graveyard of smiles, there is a single gravestone
Painted white, thick with makeup
Where the wind blows alone









From Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems by Tada Chimako, published by University of California. Copyright © 2011 by Tada Chimako. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
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