Japan Poems
Kumano Kodo
Pines, no thicker than a wrist,
rising to the light.
Everywhere is waterscape,
runnels, rivulets and rills.
The villages we pass through
are no less part of it;
intricacies of drains and gutters,
waterwheels along a street,
the stillnesses of pools.
All day the rain has been a promise
and sometimes more than that.
Slowly and with caution
we are stepping from the clouds.
The Green Bird
The green bird
at the traffic light,
one long, two short,
one long, two short,
and how each time she
finishes on one,
insisting on the incomplete.
The ravens of Japan
The ravens of Japan
are fine but don’t quite cut it.
How is it they omit
or do they just refuse that final
parched Australian aaaarhk?
Shinto
Interesting at Shinto shrines
how its gods too
succumb to bric-a-brac,
to souvenirs and amulets.
The votaries I see today
are not unlucky peasants but
engineers and CEOs
who, judging from their mode of dress,
address their modern minds
habitually to higher maths,
the smoothness of Armani suits
and all the poetries of profit.
Tokyo
I like to think about the scale,
the Metro with its six or seven
million trips a day,
those little restaurants for ten,
the bathrooms where you
bruise your elbows.
Questions
Where do cultures start, we ask?
What forgotten emperor
thought up walls without graffiti?
I’m told now that it’s not that simple.
Japan when under martial law
was famous for its litter.
Further Questions
In a carriage on the Metro
how exactly does it feel to see
so few unlike yourself?
Why it is that kimonos
and woodblock prints by Hokusai
rejoice so much in colour?
How much, over centuries,
does monochrome require
the sharpness of a sword?
Hiroshima
Even the traffic seemed respectful,
almost hushed, no horns or sirens,
as if remembering what happened.
Next morning we observed at breakfast
the coruscations on the river.
That afternoon we saw the dome,
its arches full of sky,
the monochrome museum,
remembering among so much
the blown-up photos of the cloud,
billowings which seemed to hold
the faces of its makers
and those it turned to dust.
Geoff Page is based in Canberra and has published 22 collections of poetry, two novels and five verse novels. His recent books include Gods and Uncles and PLEVNA: A Verse Biography.
Main image: (Getty).