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Japan poems

 

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).

 

 

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"Tokyo": observed with a poet's eye.


Pam | 14 February 2025  

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