From Our Album
I. “Before the War”
“Before the war”
means Fresno, a hedged-in house,
two dogs in the family.
Blackie, the small one, mine,
lapped at his insides
on the floorboard, on the way to the doctor.
Jimmy, my father's shepherd,
wouldn't eat after the evacuation.
He wouldn't live with another master
and pined away, skin and bone.
With feelings more than pride,
we call him our one-man dog.
II. Mud
Mud in the barracks—
a muddy room, a chamber pot.
Mud in the moats
around each barracks group.
Mud on the shoes
trudging to the mess hall.
Mud in the swamp
where the men chopped wood.
Mud on the guts
under a loaded wagon—
crushed in the mud by the wheel.
III. Desert Songs
1. all that we gathered
Because there was little else to do,
they led us to the artillery range
for shells, all that we gathered,
and let us dig among dunes
for slugs, when they were through.
Because there was little else to do,
one of them chased a stray
with his tail between his legs
and shot him through the head.
2. shells
A desert tortoise—
something mute and hard—
something to decorate
a desert Japanese garden:
gnarled wood, smooth
artillery shells for a border.
When a guard
smashes one, the shell
cracks open and the muscles ooze.
3. it is only natural
The pheasant is an Oriental creature,
so it is only natural
that one should fly into camp
and, famished by rations and cans,
break out in secret, native dance
over a fire, on a black coal stove.
4. song of the 442nd
Caged creatures
have curious moods.
Some of them choose
to be turned
loose in a group,
to take their chances
in the open.
5. steers
Because a dentist
logically drives a butcher truck,
I rode with my father
to the slaughterhouse on an afternoon.
Not hammers, not bullets,
could make him close his eyes.
6. he teaches
He jerks the eyes
from birds, feet
from lizards,
and punishes
ants with the gaze
of a glass.
And with his sly
gaze, his child's face,
he teaches
what has its place,
and must be
passed on to others.
IV. Song of Chicago
When the threat lessened,
when we became tame,
my father and friends
took a train to Chicago
for factory work,
for packaging bolts.
One grew a mustache
and called himself Carlos.
And they all made a home
with those of their own—
rats, bedbugs, blacks.
Lawson Fusao Inada, "From Our Album" from Before the War. Copyright © 1971 by Lawson Fusao Inada. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Source:
Before the War
(William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1971)