My poem
Japanese for Beginners: A Triptych drifts in and out of fantasies regarding Japanese film, drama, screens and prints. This is the final section:
An
aijin is a lover who has gone
away; an imprint made another day,
the final woodblock in a triptych frame:
a pentimento leaning on a wall:
bright colors paling into faded tones –
deep muted golds, moss greens, soft browns
of hidden courtyards, bare
tatami rooms,
dark purple silk kimono crumpled there -
An
aijin is a lover left alone
one day; a single floating island in
the fog-bound Inland Sea; a charcoal line,
a twisted pine, a rock, a memory
uncertain as a cross-cut flashback torn
from Rashomon; a woman, man, a gate,
a storm; their two divergent views; the truth
becomes a rubbing from a worn-down stone;
a palimpsest of touch and flesh, of hair
and scent and fantasy that once one time
a loved one was who was to stay - not drift
apart in slanting rain across the arch
of some forgotten bridge and leave behind
in
Grand Kabuki stance - two swords tucked in
his puckered sash, a fan in one pale hand -
abandoned to a walk-on role:
aijin
For them what's interested, the complete poem is on Jerry Hartwig's
Buckeye web site
(HERE IS THE LINK) .
Michael Cantor