私と小鳥と鈴と

金子　みすゞ

私が両手をひろげても、　
お空はちっとも飛べないが、
飛べる小鳥は私のやうに、
地面（じべた）を速くは走れない。　

私がからだをゆすっても、
きれいな音は出ないけど、
あの鳴る鈴は私のやうに、
たくさんな唄は知らないよ。

鈴と、小鳥と、それから私、
みんなちがって、みんないい。

Birds , bells and me

Misuzu Kaneko(1903-1930)

No matter how wide I spread my arms,
I can’t even fly up into the sky.
Flying birds cannot run
as fast as me.

No matter how much I shake my body,
I can’t even make a pretty sound.
Jingling bells don’t know
as many songs as me.

Bells, birds and then me.
Everybody’s different, everybody’s beautiful.

Misuzu Kaneko was a Japanese poet who mainly wrote for children. Misuzu is her penname and her given name was Teru. She was born in Yamaguchi prefecuture. She wrote 512 poems in her 26 years of her life. In 1923, her poems appeared in four different magazines and got great response from critics. In 1926, she marries a book keeper of her step father's book store, and had a daughter. Her husband not only banned her from sending poems to well known magazines, he contracted a venereal disease from the pleasure quarters, so she divorced him. But her husband insisted on custody of their daughter so in protest, she committed suicide.