A collection of poems written by fifth grade GT students from Long Elementary

as inspired by Tanikawa Shuntaro, a distinguished poet from Japan.

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BE

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AL

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Being Alive

By Tanikawa Shuntaro*

Being alive Being alive, now That is being thirsty That is the glare of the sunlight That is the sudden remembrance of a melody That is sneezing That is holding hands with you Being alive Being alive, now That is a miniskirt That is a planetarium That is Johann Strauss

It is Picasso It is the Alps That is meeting everything beautiful and carefully shaking off the evil hidden away in it.

Being alive Being alive, now That is being able to cry That is being able to laugh That is being able to be angry That is freedom

Being alive Being alive, now That is somewhere out there a dog is barking now That is the earth is spinning now That is somewhere out there is someone's first cries That is somewhere out there a soldier is in pain now That is somewhere out there empty swings sway back and forth now And now, now is gone Being alive Being alive, now That is a bird fluttering its wings That is the waves drifting in and out That is the snail crawling on the ground That is people loving one another The warmth of your hand That is giving me life

This is the poem that inspired the fifth grade GT students from Long Elementary to write their own version of what it means of Being Alive.

Tanikawa Shuntarō is a Japanese poet and translator. He is one of the most widely read and highly regarded of living Japanese poets, both in Japan and abroad, and a

frequent subject of speculations regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several of his collections, including his selected works, have been translated into English. He has

written more than sixty books of poetry in addition to translating Charles Schulz's Peanuts and the Mother Goose rhymes into Japanese.