Retrospect

Toyo Suyemoto

No other shall have heard,
When these suns set,
The gentle guarded word
You may forget.

No other shall have known
How spring decays
Where hostile winds have blown,
And that doubt stays.

But I remember yet
Once heart was stirred
To song—until I let
The sounds grow blurred.

And time—still fleet—delays
While pulse and bone
Take count before the days
Lock me in stone.

Editors’ Note: The Yale Review is committed to publishing pieces from its archive as they originally appeared, without alterations to spelling, content, or style. Occasionally, errors creep in due to the digitization process; we work to correct these errors as we find them. You can email [email protected] with any you find.

Toyo Suyemoto was a Japanese American poet. She worked as a librarian while she was incarcerated in a Japanese internment camp and was an associate professor at Ohio State University.

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