Classic Poem

Girl at the harbor! Girl from that foreign land!
Don't run out to the dock. The dock is wet with rain;
my heart is blazing with the sorrow of departing and resentment for being deported.
Oh, my beloved girl at the harbor of Yokohama,
don't run out to the dock. The rail is wet with rain.

“The weather could've been better at least . . .”
No, dear. Not your helpless, wretched words.
Even if the dock is washed away in the rains,
or poor thing, your throat choked tight with weeping and sobbing;
your country would not allow me, this rebel-youth from the foreign land, to stay.
You, wretched girl at the harbor, must not even cry.

Your fellow, leaving this grand pier with the deportation tag on his back,
is not unaware.
When you return now to the small house
where you used to spend day after day in company with
unknowable passion and the laughter of the gallant young men, there'll be
nothing left to greet you but the muddy footsteps of those who rushed in and out.
I know this better than anyone else.

But you, girl at the harbor! No doubt you'd know.
All those who now sleep in a bird cage, did not live by the charity of your country,
nor did they dwell in your sweet heart.
Nevertheless
I for your sake, you for my sake,
and they for your sake, you for their sake:
why did we pledge upon our lives, why did we
keep vigil in the streets on snow-falling nights?

Nothing explains why;
we are not related by any natural tie.
You are a foreign girl, and I am a colonized man.
The single explanation is that you and I,
we were but brother-and-sister laborers.
So for a single purpose,
the lives of two different countries shared the same pot of rice.
You and I have lived in love.

Oh my sweet love, girl of Yokohama.
Rain falls on the sea and the waves rise with the wind.
Leaving behind everything that remains
to return to the country of my mother and father,
I am afloat on the Pacific Ocean.
On the ocean, even the gulls with far-reaching wings
are not in sight today while you, my love in Yokohama, who used to take wings in my heart, disappear as of today.

But you, the bird of Yokohama.
You mustn't feel lonely. Isn't the wind blowing?
What if your one-and-only wax-paper umbrella were to break?
Go in at once.
Now the sound of your wooden clogs has disappeared, muffled by the
cries of falling rain and striking waves.
Please go, go on.
Though I am chased away, those gallant young lads
must be sitting under the iron bars in sweat-soaked clothes;
the child-workers from the northern land at your factory must be weeping,
longing for their mothers and sisters.
Shouldn't you return to wash their clothes and
hold those young ones to your bosom?
Kayo! Kayo! You must go back inside.
The siren has rung three times already and
the black uniform has pulled down my hands several times.
Now we must go: you must return and I must go.

Girl of the foreign land!
Don't shed any tears over those lads, or over me, no longer to be there in the demonstration that sweeps down the street.
Do not miss me because I will no longer be waiting behind the light pole when you leave the factory.
There will be another wave of young laborers to strengthen your heart,
and the hands of the love-deprived child-workers will be awaiting you.

And once again, the young men's speeches
will pour down on the heads of the workers like flames.

Get inside! Get inside at once.
The rain falls on the dock and the winds strike the deck.
Don't let your umbrella break.
With the same umbrella that sent away the young foreign man today, shouldn't you
go marching on the Tokyo-Yokohama highway accompanied by the sound of wooden clogs
to greet those lads who will be freed tomorrow?

Well then, my beloved, girl at the harbor,
you are not the kind who would settle for the sorrow of departing,
the small pain of sending away your beloved fellow.
Don't you see that I, your beloved, am being driven away from this land?
Those lads are locked up without even knowing this fact. At this thought,
with this indignant reality,
let your pigeon-like bosom flare up in red.
When your pale skin can no longer bear its heat,
cast that heat at their faces and heads till your heart is content.

By then, though now departing, I will have returned by way of Pusan and Tokyo
to Yokohama with friends.
In long-held sorrow and resentment,
you might bury your pretty head, tired from waiting, in my chest, and you might
cry and you might laugh.
My girl at the harbor!
Don't run out to the dock.
Rain falls on your frail back and wind strikes your umbrella.