PRESENT simple/perfect - FUTURE simple/passive (Tokyo 1993 )

Cherry

By littleditty

Fri, 11 Mar 2011
  • 2809 reads
10 comments
 

1993 Tokyo, Classroom Dialogue (The eldest man speaks first)

We live on a fault line.
Every seventy year,s,
The table shake,s,
The earth skin tear,s
And house of cards
FLutter and dive into pile,S.
Some fly into THE grave.
Some stay.

Every seventy years? (She says,
Doing a rough calculation.)
One is due. That is now! You,
We, are waiting for it!
What will you,
We, do after it has been?

We are waiting for it.
We are not waiting for it.
It will come.
It will be seen.
We will build again, better.
We will grow again, better.
It will be done.

You have been studying, Kansawa-san.
We have been studying, Sensei-san.

Certificate U
Non-fiction
whimsy
Other Non-fiction

Comments

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on
ld - you certainly haven't lost your touch;-) Brilliant! Hope things are well with you. Tina;-)xx

 

Submitted by littleditty on
thanks Tina-san -(but it's an old one by littleditty from when she was smaller and more Japanese:)x

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on
Well then, ld-san, I can only say some things obviously get better with a little age on them;-)x

 

Submitted by littleditty on
hope-so xx

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on
I really like this poem

 

Submitted by littleditty on
glad you did insert, cheers

 

Submitted by Chastol on
Fantastic, littleditty. I love the innovative way you introduce the tenses. Did you ever experience a 'big one' while your were in Japan? I lived through the quake that struck on the day you posted this poem: more than 25,000 others were not so lucky.

Chastok

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/244554

Submitted by littleditty on
Hi Chastol, thanks, glad you liked -I was in Tokyo, 1990-93, (this class was my class full of kind uncle-types in Roppongi) so no reallybig ones but The Big One was expected. I miss the place -not how it shakes- cups sliding across tables, pictures falling off walls..where were you March 11th?

 

Submitted by Chastol on
Hi littleditty, thanks for your response to my comment. English class in Roppongi? Interesting! I lived in Azabudai, just on the periphery of Roppongi until October 2011, when I moved to Shanghai. Yes, I was there for the March 11 quake (posted an article on my response to this on this site), and it was, even in Tokyo, quite a shaker. I'll take a look at your other Japan-related works later. Keep up the good writing.

Chastok

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/244554

Submitted by littleditty on
I don't have much from Japandays here -I see you do over at your place! I'll be reading -cheers x