Classic Poem

I have a friend, once “Hey, war buddy!”
now a fishing partner and a rival in go.
His old lady, a graduate of a women's normal school and barren,
is always working in the fields, like a grub.
He has only one bad habit:
he learns by heart more of my wretched poems than I do.
The only way to deal with a reader and critic like this is to drink him under the table,
so about once every two months I go by train
with cheap whisky that smells like medicine.
He entertains me with local sake that smells like dust.
His old lady's stew is good,
such pungency! the soy, saturating, makes me weep.
Disproportionate to the narrow village, a zelkova tree soars,
and that's his sole real estate.
Each of us dropped our names
in a distant battlefield, or in a brothel.
Since I have no manual work, he calls me “poet.”
Because he uses razors, I call him “barber.”
Crowned with the village name, he is “The Barber of Sebira.”
When he gets drunk, he likes war songs.
“An enemy yesterday, a friend today,”
that antique is his favorite.
What's this!
Isn't that a song from the war our grandpas went to?
Today the two friends with hangovers put fishing rods on their shoulders
and pissed together on a narrow path, under the blasting sun.
In the field, leaves of sweet potatoes
swaying like a chest-roentgenogram,
swaying in a row like blue wraiths—
hey! our good old war buddies.