Selected Work

        by Thomas Fitzsimmons











        Memorial Day-2003


        at close of evening
        the bright bird turns inward
        sings silently

            the clam also

        roses

          drunk with the sun
          still glow

        under a rising moon
          the owl calls out
            to all his WWII
        shipmates killed at sea
          under a full moon

        leaving moon
          owl
            garden
            he turns back into silence

              also

          Thomas Fitzsimmons went into World War II as an underage merchant seaman just after Pearl Harbor and came out from the USAAF just after Hiroshima. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Oct. 1926. Formerly writer/editor, The New Republic (Washington, DC), feature writer, The Asahi Daily News (Tokyo, Japan), he is author, translator or editor of some 60 books. At present he is editor of two book series from University of Hawaii Press: Asian Poetry in Translation: Japan; and Reflections. FitzsimmonŐs most recent works are: Build Me Ruins: The One-Eyed Boy Grows Another Eye (2002); Iron Harp: Birth of the One-Eyed Boy 1999; Planet Forces (1999);Fencing the Sky;1998, The Poetry and Poetics of Ancient Japan (a translation), 1997.

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