Embracing Rivers – Cabbage leaf, 4 February 2003

All photographs are gelatine silver prints from 35mm negatives.

Cicada’s wing in autumn, 13 September 2003

All photographs are gelatine silver prints from 35mm negatives.

Naniwa rose, 27 April 2003

All photographs are gelatine silver prints from 35mm negatives.

Embracing Rivers – Persimmon leaf, 28 January 2003

All photographs are gelatine silver prints from 35mm negatives.

Shadowflowers, 21 January 2003

All photographs are gelatine silver prints from 35mm negatives.

When the shutters began to clatter up
On the shops that still bothered to open
Along a gap-toothed avenue of commerce
That was new to the world in sixty-five

When Mr. Kadota started his perambulation
At the western end, as he does every day
Without fail, without an end in sight, without beginning
In any span of time one might recall

When he stopped at the cigarette machine
And put his money in to claim
His morning supply of thoughts and cautions
His retreat from excess ambition

When Mr. Kadota slipped the last
     of yesterday’s cigarettes
Into an ivory holder, put fire to the leaves, and started
     on the body of his perambulation

When the woman at the vegetable shop began
To shift boxes into the public gaze
And bent above her work to say
A crisp good-morning to the funny old man

When Mr. Kadota caught a glimpse of himself
     in the mirror of the hair salon, and saw
A funny old man – dark glasses in the morning light
     a cigarette in a holder, and an ancient bolo tie

When, in the course of his perambulation, Mr. Kadota came across
     the early merchants
The woman at the vegetable shop, the flower man
Those young men at the gaming parlour, and the supermarket girls

When Mr. Kadota arrested his perambulation at the corner
He looked back along the morning light
     to where he started out, and saw
A reward there after all, for an architect’s ambitions

Nothing the tobacconist wants to see, nothing she sees.
Light another stick of incense,
     Put it on the grave.

That spring should be so lovely. Always galling,
Always settles like the dust blown in from China
     Along this dirty street.

Shadows, gather in the morning light, descend
     From the dusty reaches, from the metal braces
          Rusting overhead.

Forty years ago they sat and drank and thought it up:
Put a cover on it, this old street, and make it an arcade –
     to keep the dust down, sweep away the war.

Her sweetheart was among them –
     and her husband, too.
Husband died when it was done. The other lived too long.

Suck on a cigarette, and draw the window open.
Shoot a line of smoke to the arcade,
     and slam the window shut.

Glare at them, the fickle shadows, in the morning light
     Dancing with the dust
          And drifting smoke.

There’s always smoke, and noise, and they were wrong:
She wasn’t safe at all,
     sent out to the country in the war.

She left the battle unresolved –
     sweethearts off to war, and she was gone.
There was never enough food,
     and they bombed them just the same.

Pulls on her cigarette, draws the window back, exhales a blast
At all shadows and graves,
     and slams the window shut again.

Forty years, it should be long enough to wait.
Sixty years, it should be long enough to win contention
     between the shadows and the grave.

Are we alike in moments nearing sleep?
When inside the darkness made
By the flesh before our eyes,
We lose sight of what we know by day,
And fear how we must live apart
From the fabric of our memory.

Waking still, I try to conjure
Images to lead me into dreams.
I find myself beside a frozen river
Far from where I lie and far from sleep.
It is winter here; a gentle snow
Drifts down toward my face and hands.
I ask the shadows cast by barren trees
How I forget so much of you,
So much I must have known.

I catch a snowflake in my hand,
And watch it melt upon my skin.

If I could bring the cold of winter
To rest inside my hand,
My blood a frozen river –
Could I hold intact for ever
This lattice-work of crystal?

But I am memory and flesh.
What is drawn to me of winter
Must melt into the air
To rise, and join, and fall again.

I will at last have nothing left of you
As waking moments mist away.

Empty quiet by the window, and an empty shell
Where my seat of life should be –
     cry all you will, birds: you do me no good.
Quiet as the mind, the seat of life, without a thought;
And I wonder: what am I to do?
Noisy at the window, birds, with empty heads –
     you do me good, cry all you will.

ii

What is that – blue sky? The children unperturbed, although
     our spring remains a hue behind a cloud.
A tennis ball, and then its boy, manic in career,
     come down behind my trailing rose.
Much they have in common, too – no flowers yet, but limpid green
Set upon by aphids; hard to tell so early on
     what will be a flower bud, what will be a thorn.
The boy approaches: open-faced and canny – speculative we, and faithful.

ii

See there: that building draped across the hill,
     finished at last, and sprouting laundry.
Let’s reflect a while, and watch the laundry dry.
We won’t be lost in thought; or unusually sad.
Imagine where the laundry was – fly across the taiga
With the ghosts in bespoke suits, to Paris and arcades,
     before our fate returns in soiled clothes.

iv

Head and shoulders only, of a man on the new building:
     distant on the roof, and small.
He moves down closer to the edge; stands entire at the railing.
Time and space were his to compass: to tinker with the ready-made, like me.
Now he is a man against the sky, and everything could be
     the product of his hands.
He may disclaim authority when pressed, but makers we remain –
     liable but shifty – all the same.

v

Our Fukien trader consults his herbals, works a deal,
     gives advice on pets and parking –
Taking the night air along our quiet street:
Turning at the ruined shrine; following the light
     along the cracks in his foundations.
We are uninvited strangers here – odd voices; excess paperwork –
     never quite desired.
We sniff at one another, bearing teeth and stilling tails.

vi

Last week were weeds up there, and today a new foundation
     where the red earth left – another dumptruck emigration.
All around was ferrous dirt after the war: it stained the cars,
So they pave it over, dig it out. It’s buried still, below my garden,
     too deep to do the flowers any good.
Everyone remembers it, steps lightly in the rainy season,
     when it bubbles up and washes down the hill.
No one looks to find the source. It could be anyone’s.

vii

We in our old places, near the ground: we share the bugs
     they don’t yet know above, in the new building.
Our insects are eager climbers – seasonal, with rain and heat –
They rise and move among us: ants and pill bugs, centipedes.
Those new people are a class apart from us, above
     our level – but the bugs will climb.
Wealth and other virtues temporal will settle in their place,
     as the leggy rise, and greet the season.

viii

A wild cat gazes at me from the roof: dishevelled avatar,
It says – that what I see is not what it appears to be,
     and doesn’t care if I agree.
I go about my business, a small part of a small world;
I seek a life I can believe in, though it often disappoints –
     you are profligate and callous, every one.
And it goes off in pursuit of fruitful compensation:
     sun and shade, and food, and time at ease.

ix

Boys out in the street, they’re laughing rough, kicking a can –
     not just toying with it, but striking out with force.
Who is it schools the angels in their violence and noise?
The girls, too, are not lost yet – but I see them chasing cats;
     I hear them shrieking at their brothers.
I go out to be commanding when a ball hits my old window:
     and I am stupid to be angry; and they are stupid, too.
Do call us in to dinner, love: before the world falls.

x

Summer now – and I am half-asleep, in a breeze that cools the sun.
I hear birds in casual and sunlit conversation;
     and the grind and thud of power hammers, and an afternoon quiz show.
Then Mary had a little lamb picks up on a piano, and I wonder at it –
     half asleep – which Mary? And which lamb?
Birds pipe up, and I awake; the tune resolves into an old pop song, then scales.
Too hot – it will be soon – but the afternoons are cool. I face the breeze,
     to smell the rose-vine growing, to catch the quiet sounds.