"Shell" by Shinkichi Takahashi (Translated by Lucien Stryk)

Back in the 1970s, when still living among the cornfields of Illinois, I remember listening—spellbound—to my father-in-law’s bold 
resonance when reading us his translations of Shinkichi Takahashi’s contemporary Zen poems. Four decades later that voice 
blent with a Japanese poet’s vision moves me still—stirring the cycles of life and death while I paint the wavy image of a conch. 
And inspiring me to weave that painting into a video combining both their spirits with my own.

                                                                                                                                      -- Suzanne


 


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Shell

Nothing, nothing at all

    is born,

dies, the shell says again

    and again

from the depth of hollowness.

    Its body

swept off by tide—so what?

    It sleeps

in sand, drying in sunlight,

    bathing

in moonlight.  Nothing to do

    with sea

or anything else.  Over

    and over

it vanishes with the wave.

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Dan’s father, the American poet and translator of Buddhist 

literature, Lucien Stryk (1924-2013),* was instrumental in 

bringing this highly unorthodox Japanese writer (already 

locally renowned for poems melding experimental

freedom with traditional Zennist thought) to the attention

of the English-speaking world in Triumph of the Sparrow 

(Grove Press), a comprehensive volume of the 

Zen-inspired poetry of Shinkichi Takahashi (1901-1987).  

Lucien visiting Takahashi in the latter’s Tokyo study (1970). 

*See "Featured Post" (top left of this page) for a video based on two of Lucien's original poems.