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人或加讪,心无疵兮。
My conscience
stays untainted
in spite of rumors
and slanders from
the outside.

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Tuesday Poem: Excerpt from ‘Men, Having Read my Poems, Went to Their Deaths’ by Takamura Kotaro

To save myself from the fear of death,

I became desperate about the “desperate times” and wrote.

My countrymen at the front lines read these poems.

Men read them and went to their deaths.

The Submarine captain who wrote his family

That he reread my poems each day soon afterward went down

      with his ship.

—-

More poems posted on a Tuesday can be found here