A YOUTH WHO CAN’T SHIT
If there’s a youth who can’t shit, let me know.
I’d like to have him talk about how much fun life
is. Will he contentedly respond by saying that
situated in “a special site, an actual site” like
the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the
Campidoglio, he is repeating great failures? Will
he gallantly assert that he doesn’t even know the
difference between autonomous and autocratic? Or
will he overbearingly tell us that soon (that is,
as the twentieth century draws to a close) “category”
becomes vague and the shit he can’t shit comes out
and that’s even more of a failure? But! But! But!
The axiom of shame is iconography. The matter of shit
is historicism. To a statue, life may be too hard.
Akira Tatehata
Translation from Japanese by Hiroaki Sato
Posted over on Poems & Poetics
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