Imperfect Poetry and Meaningless Poetry

Perfectly tired
of being caught perfectly
in fiction that is perfection,
I try to write imperfect poetry with perfect imperfection;
but I can only write imperfect poetry
imperfectly.

Fed up
with meaningful poetry,
I try to write
meaningless poetry,
but
nothing can be more difficult
than writing meaningless poetry.
Words have meaning —
infinite meaning — and meaning multiplies, multiplies;
words counterblow,
never ceasing to insist
meaninglessly
that they cannot help meaning by any means.

-Iijima Koichi (1930- )
translated from the Japanese by by Naoshi Koriyama & Edward Lueders