One snowy day.

It had been raining since morning.
As if a portent of what was to come,
it was a cold rain.

The rain gradually turned first to snow
and then by some chemical reaction into flames.

The red-hot flames
instantly engulfed the factory, silent on a holiday,
transforming everything into sintered lumps waiting to be scrapped.

In this way,
it all came to an end.

What remained
was a landscape sadder than anything
I had ever seen.

Moist steam rising from the hot debris clung to my face
and a strange stench stuck in my nose.

In the midst of such an unreal reality
there is no attempt to resist.

I accepted this unreal reality and,
resolved to face what had now become sintered lumps
and whatever the future might bring,
I grabbed my camera.

And then,
I recorded the death throes of those pearly, lustrous sinters.

When I did,
the requiem of the shutter
and the death throes of the sinters
made a beautiful harmony
unlike any I had ever heard before.

And yet you must take a step.
One step, and then another.
The same step, again and again.


David Ohyama

* English Translation: Hart Larrabee