Spring

Spring Has Gone

A photo from the spring of 1985, a year before the accident,

Shows Katya’s father, mother and elder brother smiling

With fully bloomed trees behind them on two riverbanks.

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In order not to forget,

In order to stay alive,

Even one more second,

She came to Japan

Hoping that the Japanese

Could help her as she wonders,

“What should I do?”

Katya, as a one-year-old infant,

Was blasted with radiation

From the Chernobyl accident.

When I first met Katya, she was 16.

She said to me, “Hurry! Quickly!”

Katya often comes down with spells of fever and fatigue.

The intervals between her spells

Gradually grow shorter and shorter.

On the 11th of March, 2011,

The four Fukushima nuclear reactors were wrecked.

Three have since gone into meltdown.

A gust of wind has blown down the cherry blossoms at their peak.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Katya from Chernobyl, then Fukushima.

More dying every day,

Up to the second and third generation.

Translated into English by Deborah and John Saxon