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| Tendo Taijin |
The Dogs of Ordos
The messengers of the noble ones,
Placed small bronze dogs by the ears
When they buried their dead.
With their whole souls, day and night, they continue listening,
In the silence, to the never-ending murmurs and whispers of the dead.
They remember the deep, dark words they overheard;
And to tell their tales to the descendants of that tribe
They are reborn into this world.
That is why, it is said, their heads are disproportionately large.
Have those dogs now secretly appeared in this land?
The other sits upon a small Yi-dynasty box
In a quiet corner in an antique shop
On one of the small streets off the main Ginza thoroughfare,
Resting on a glass case, and regarding the city sights.
No one can ever hear the utterances of the dead.
Tendo Taijin Poetry
Translated by Stephen Comee
The people of the northern desert,
The messengers of the noble ones,
Placed small bronze dogs by the ears
When they buried their dead.
Is this a special kind of custom?
Two dogs—
They neither escape nor run away; they are loyal.
With their whole souls, day and night, they continue listening,
In the silence, to the never-ending murmurs and whispers of the dead.
Then a hundred and twenty years later,
They remember the deep, dark words they overheard;
And to tell their tales to the descendants of that tribe
They are reborn into this world.
That is why, it is said, their heads are disproportionately large.
Why
Have those dogs now secretly appeared in this land?
Already, one of those dogs is living in Kyoto.
The other sits upon a small Yi-dynasty box
In a quiet corner in an antique shop
On one of the small streets off the main Ginza thoroughfare,
Resting on a glass case, and regarding the city sights.
Looking at unknown passers-by,
Whatever can it be trying to say to them?
No one has ever heard the voice of that dog—
No matter how hard one strains one’s ears, or purifies one’s heart,
No one can ever hear the utterances of the dead.
The Voice of the Tower
From the time of myth when everyone everywhere spoke the same language,
The world has continued to beat with the subtle sound of the Word, the Word, the Word.
But from where have we come, and how far have we advanced?
Even now, no one knows for sure.
On the day we entered the third millennium, something was emitted toward man
From the top of the tower, thrust deep into this assuredly hard world.
Was it a voice? the Word?
When we all bring back to life the memory of ancient times when everywhere
We spoke the same language and we all understood one another,
Will it turn out to be a symbol? A secret code?
Or perhaps a rhythm?
Then we will have learned that mankind has not really advanced that far.
The Wind from Dakar
A drop of sweat, a flash of light, a walking parade of primary colors—
On gleaming black skin, blue rouge tints lips,
And gold bracelets beat out a passionate rhythm.
On the ocean breeze, the smell of putrefaction wafts by a dark hut;
At midnight, a ship with golden sails arrives.
Beneath the moonlight, the footsteps leading there are erased,
And on the ocean’s surface, a way stretches forth.
This Watery Planet itself is Noah’s Ark.
An Attempt at the Corridor
Some people walk along the corridor.
Facing the people standing there,
The beasts speak to them.
But they remain unaware,
Though energy is thrown at them, made palpable;
Like adversaries avoiding fire,
Is it through the power of disciplined men?
In the voice that resounds
There are things that are understood,
And there are also many things that are never understood.
Not being able to throw them away,
While embracing all,
One step is taken in the corridor
For the very first time.
And that first step
Is what is searched for,
Is what continue to be searched for—
It is a precious moment in which one has direct awareness of the self.
In order to simply wait for that time to come,
While being aware of “the time of space,”
I keep that awareness,
And while also being aware of the idea of “walking,”
I begin to walk through the corridor.
I let my voice resound,
And I try to touch all with it,
Within the labyrinth of the corridor.
On a Felucca
Was the wind strong from the morning today?
Through the window’s glass
There is a sound that can be heard regularly
Seen from the hotel window, the muddy Nile is rippling
In a small cove right beneath my eyes
Twenty-odd feluccas with closed sails
All connected, moving up and down, left and right, together
Every time they touch, a dull echo of reverberating wood
This is Aswan, Egypt
The weather in December was like that ten-thousand
Kilometers away in Japan in early summer
And I experienced such heat at year’s end
As I never had before
The day before yesterday, at the entrance to the Necropolis in Luxor,
I saw a German tourist who had collapsed on the path
And was having convulsions in both arms and legs
Now, I was staying at Aswan’s Old Cataract Hotel,
Having joined, at the invitation of a Swiss friend,
A three-day trip to go and visit Abu Simbel temple
Before my eyes, short-term tourists
Who wanted to take a stroll around Elephant Island
Were loudly waiting for the wind to calm down
On the terrace beside to pool filled with
Screaming children playing in the water.
“As the wind is strong, we cannot take the boat out today”
The young Nubian ship captains were telling
The crowds of tourists that engulfed
A table that the news spread all around
Among whom, one of the young captains who was unknown to me
Suddenly said, I want to show you the president’s son’s house
And invited me out of the hotel
On the sidewalk where dirt and fallen leaves dance
Even though the sunlight is weak
No one can be seen anywhere
We followed the road
Suddenly, we turned right onto a street
The atmosphere of the place changed in an instant
Lines of large houses with gates and quiet, high walls
Here, Aswan is a summer resort for wealthy Cairenes
Without a sound, in front of a large closed gate
The young man suddenly stopped and pointed
“Look at the deformed face of
The man who became president of Egypt in 1981”
I saw that this man would eventually seize control over the Arabs
However, in the nineteen years that have passed since then
Proud of prosperity and preferential treatment of relatives
If you ruin an innocent people
Inevitably the world will eventually take the road to ruin
I was secretly convinced of this when I saw the big house with its gate
Yesterday the Nile was calm
And I hired a felucca
Lying on the deck of the boat
While bathing in the blessings of the sun
I entrusted myself to the movement of the waves blown by the wind
While time crossed sideways
I waited for it to pass vertically
Within this world
The true place for humanity—
You can ask where it is, but
Before you know it you completely forget to do so.
Where is “this”?
Who is this “I”?
Without thinking or looking back
Many days fly by
Over my head at every moment clouds that change freely
Now it is slowly carried by the flow
Where is this boat headed for?
My eyes open with the voice of the young captain
“When you get up
You will be on the Nile River”
Now that I am alone, among everything else,
What have I learned from my two stays
In Europe for more than four years?
At the front desk of the Cataract
“Are you really Japanese?”
I had been traveling for over four years
A French-speaking Japanese
Something that had never been seen
By a Nubian girl speaking with laughter
To English-speaking hotel guests
The response of employees was poor
A distortion of modern Egyptian history?
“I don’t feel like leaving the poolside”
In the foreign languages I hear
While listening
I am asking who I am, but
Now I am standing on the bank of the Nile
To Amma, Guardian God of the Dogon People
I wonder if it can break through this clear blue sky—
Whatever was shining in the ancient firmament?
What was it that could be seen?
The sunken eyes of the elders here,
Wordless as ever,
From the top of a cliff, see something that seems to have survived. . . .
Encouraged by Cameroon poets
When I was invited into the center of this open space,
A transparent invitation arrived from the Sirian star system.
Turning around, way off in the distance,
Houses and wriggling people can be seen on the earth, like grains of rice,
Before the eyes, the elders sit in the center of a few dozen tribesmen who surround them.
This is Africa, the Republic of Mali,
The Sangha region, Bandiagara, atop the escarpment,
Where the Dogon people live.
Borrowing wooden staves from poets who had come from Rome,
With bended knees, three times they strike the stone slab,
From a low position, like crawling on the earth,
Their voices begin to resound: “A-a-a- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - a-h!
The ancient world of the Dogon I learned about
In Marcel Griaule’s Pale Fox—
These are the people I have dreamed of seeing—the Dogon!
Even now, somewhere upon this earth,
Can anything still be passed down
About the distant star system of Sirius?
The voice of an Asian poet—who?—his voice continues to resound,
Without a single clearing of his throat, he turns toward the elders—
As he turns this time to face their guardian god, Amma,
A gust of cool wind caresses his cheeks.
Where is this? He turns around and soon intones:
“Kitchee Manitou!”
“Kitchee Manitou!”
“Kitchee Manitou!” three times offering his voice.*
Three years later, a Moroni poet who saw him off at Senegal’s Dakar airport,
With a gentle smile, told him: “At that time, the Dogon elders
Perfectly comprehended what you said.”
It was a world in which one could converse in Divine words,
When languages from distant lands could be understood with ease, like before the time of the Tower of Babel.
Now, in Gaza, Palestine . .
The landscape of Gaza, devastated by bombings, is captured in a single photo—
Children screaming, blood streaming from their heads.
Leaders keep pressing buttons with the detachment of a video game,
Seeking the extermination of all Palestinians,
Madmen wishing for the erasure of an entire nation.
And the president of a great power who supports them— a businessman
Acting only in pursuit of his own gain.
No matter how long the genocide continues,
An endless war marks but a milestone in the eternal recurrence of history.
Even if there were as many representatives of God as there are races on Earth,
If not one of them can stop this genocide alone,
Then this water-covered planet will surely bring down its own iron hammer.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, typhoons,
Volcanic eruptions, torrential rains, heavy snow, storm surges, avalanches, landslides—
Every kind of natural disaster will be unleashed
Upon the arrogant humans who have gone too far.
Children who survived
After losing their families to indiscriminate bombings—
Their deep sorrow and bitter resentment
Will rise as a great swell,
Crossing borders, religions, and races,
To torment all the slaughterers
For as long as they live.
The smell of blood, the scent of burning flesh,
Released from the earth,
Riding invisible winds,
Now continue to spread across the world.
Even if blood-stained Gaza, soaked in blood and resentment,
Is turned into a resort town,
The countless bodiless spirits
Of the mercilessly slain
Will wander still—a summer getaway painted in blood.
Resentment and rage—these are the weapons of the innocent.
Civilization has continued to advance,
Yet humans have failed to learn from history.
Now, dictators dream of vast empires,
Their ambitions insatiable,
Spanning century after century.
Biography
Orient mystic poet Tendo Taijin (reciter, calligrapher) = VΘEME®
Born in Otaru City in 1944.
His major poetry collections include The World of Genzo (1981), The Blue Ring of Ezra Pound (1995), The Great God Kikki Manitou (1997), Red May (1999), The Winds of Dakar (2005), The Snow of Pico de Europa (2015), VΘEME® (2019), “Long Poem Babylonian Poetry” (2020). The Dogon Gods - To Amma-(2021). The Sky of Milan - To the Painter KEIZO (Keizo Morishita)] (2023).
In July 1990, he attended a master class with Galina Vishnevskaya (soprano) in Salzburg.
At the age of 21, in March 2002, she gave a solo performance in Arena de Verona, Italy.
Since October 2006, she has produced 2389poetry performances (as of August 31, 2025) in Tokyo in an art performance project titled “Projet La Voix des Poètes”, which aims to restore the voice of the flesh.
A member of the African International Poetry Association since 2000, he is currently active in the revival of poetry readings and participates in poetry festivals around the world: Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Colombia, Cuba, France, Iraq，Iran, Italy, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, New Zealand, Portugal, Reunion, Senegal、South Korea, Switzerland, U.S.A, Venezuela, Kosova, Taiwan, India, Indoneshia, etc.
Currently a member of the Japan Pen Club and the Japan Literary and Artistic Society, he is a world-renowned poet, reciter, calligrapher, and art critic.
E-mail:tendotaijinburau@mbi.nifty.com
