Ode to the Yakult Dame

Flashback Friday: A Poem by Stephen Mina

I. Complaint

Yakult dame, what is your name?

For I should know, and this refrain,

Which sweetly seems, though silent screams,

Would know the word and ease my pain.

Overkill though this ode may be, far worse you see, the raging sea

That roils inside, tempestuously.

Why, you ask? No simple task, to elucidate my pain.

For English words would fall unheard upon thy dainty ears.

A tragedy I cannot mask. Our tongues are not the same.

So now you see that words and grief that keep us far apart,

But just one favour would I ask to ease my troubled heart.

I feel quite blue, for: “ヤクルトです”

Illumines not the maiden who,

Daily floats in through the door,

And leaves as swiftly as before.

My agony would I abjure.

Wherefore go ye? Linger yet. Tell me what I won’t forget.

My complaint is made, my course is set.

Dare I now, to plead again:

Yakult dame, what is your name?

Find the original on the Hiroshima JET Wordpress.