A deer lies in the center of the museum of art

Its eyes closed   that day its life was split in two

Shoes passed by   with hard heels

Eyes always at the same level

Along a line linking masterpiece to masterpiece

Never dropping to see what’s below

Today I’m sitting down   so I see

A fawn  run by Henri Rousseau’s lion

And Freida Kahlo’s monkey without

A word  I reach out to the deer  the blood on the

Sleeve of my white blouse    is red paint

Made of cinnabar    this color hurts

Warmth is not death   today when the image of the deer

Appears on my retina

I go home in

the wheel chair that is my soul

Yoko Tawada is a novelist and poet born in Tokyo. After graduating from the Department of Literature at Waseda University, she moved to Germany and later earned a PhD from the University of Zurich. Writing in both German and Japanese, she was awarded the Adalbert-von-Chamisso Prize in 1996 for her German-language works. In 2018, she won the National Book Award for Translated Literature (USA) for The Emissary. She has been based in Berlin since 2006.