One Who Loves Love Poem by Sakutaro Hagiwara

I rouged my lips,
And kissed the white birch bark.
Even if I were thought handsome,
I have no rubber bouncing ball-like swelling of the bosom,
Nor a powder-scoured scent to the skin.
A luckless fellow, wilted through-and-through.
Pathetic and lost.
In the fragrant meadows of first summer today,
In the glittering woods today,
I snugly pulled on a cerulean pair of gloves,
And slipped into a mock-corset for my waist,
And rubbed pretend powder around my neck.
And thus, I assumed contrived coquetry,
Then like young girls do,
I tilted my face just so,
And kissed the fresh bark of the white birch,
And rouged my lips rose-red,
And clung to the trunk of the towering white arbor.