Shearsman 62 Peter Makin: "Hagoromo"

Shearsman 62

Peter Makin

Hagoromo

I

Under the thick sheet of water
ribbed, rushing
an eye of air

A scattering of thin silver cigarette foils
on the black ash, like paper to the touch now they've been burned.
On the heap of rice-straw mats; then the flood from the typhoon took them.
Dislodged from her room with the carpet and the loose dust under it
and the padlocks.

How the bamboos sweep their heads down over the path
in honour of the passing.

thin sticks in soft skin

mossed up, and unsheathed;
bark hanging from the wet wood

In this dark bowl of the woods
where nothing changes
the sky silvered
with a stirring of the fronds against the light.

What was intended to be a root, of a tree,
and now the moss grows from it,
hanging in air.
And the other root, like a beard
with water-drops hanging from it
from the stream.

The road snakes round the hill
                       and hugs it
the bamboos fall off the mountainside
flopping in curls.

In the dark valley no movement.

Motif: the monotone
(steppes: Mali wastes)
where the plough turns
under the digue;
comes, and returns
unendingly.

Gleam, glisten, glide under the rock
where the old beard of fine roots drips;
pulse of a tiny wave over the moss

and now the bamboo-leaves will tremble
from the melting on them.

Little wormlets
at all angles over the bark
but not random;
flecks, nail-marks
on a silky dull green
in patterns.

Strange regularities
in the burrowings of the creatures
in the soft mud under the water
where I drink my drink for my
dead wife and wash my face.

Shaggy boiled crud, for bark
rhythms of ridge
open up,
ridges become cleft,
and re-fold

Silent wood
the woodpecker quietly
off,
and the crow echoing.

II

Light let in on the
wreckage of last year's snows

Green, mottled, rotting.

A little stand of mushrooms
along the groin of a meadow
under bamboos;

two streams of mist
so slowly, quietly rising
from behind the mountain.

Brown lip
where the bloodied scar of the trunk
drools, scarf 'd
and welded.

The Jardin du Luxembourg,
driving back on black coffee from Arles;
what rage, what hate, what misery.

A trickle sound in the forest
and the leaf falls

Watching the light grow
crook'd in the arm of this tree
while the crows all around
                    Aw, Aw,

III

Leaves, shadow-lapping

rust and thick yellow, with green

her clothes (her sweep?)
her colours
translucent brush-strokes, for ribs
like an insect-pod Christ by Cimabue
but with more sense of what are muscles.

A crow straggles its way across the void
to meet them,
the fiery flood
across these uncompanionable peaks

where the bamboos
grind against each other
for the coming winter.

burning firewood, for baths
smouldering rice-hulls, for ash

the tobi circles around and doesn't find much,
the mice having gone to ground;
so that one is grateful for the red berries that stand out
and the thin peppers that glow
and orange fires under plumes,
and for any sunset without clouds
that slows down the waning of the light a little longer.
The wild boar (or tanuki?) now shit gingkos
with the nuts mostly intact
and a mush of digested flesh round them;
the old crow still hangs by the jaw
slicked down by the rain, over the weeks,
in the silence.

The hill of rice-husks
has a bunch of old bamboo stakes stuck in from the top
to let the air in as it burns.
The sharp odour.

Fierce orange-red
under couch-grass:

her colour,
my smell.

Small paddyfields
with rounded yellow-green grass banks bounding them in.

Coming down in sunlight through a broken glade
thinking of my wife as she then was

"Good morning Mr Sheeps";
"Whoops!" for the tail of a rabbit, vanishing

Tensing and Silo in the snow;
in the Portobello Road, 6 a.m., baring her bum to a fire-hydrant.

The tea-bushes by our field: "We should do everything" (that pertains to
living in the countryside in Japan)
But Samson and Delilah
ran away

The ink puckers the paper
at the knots where the brush turned,
pulling the strength in.

shoes, detective stories, matchboxes, her major remains
washed away as ash when the river rose

So that at last she put her all into it
(tout pour l'art)

the glass rib wavers
back and forth,
plays over the lichen, the colour of dead blood,
under the unending rush,
which holds to the rock,
too thin to be shifted.

Abandoned (when she went to London)
but not let go.

IV

The pale cream of the circle of the lower sun
through the drifting grey,
cloud off the mountain;

the streamer bunches up round the flaming wheel,
wreathes it in shroud,
hides it again.

The snow, a stole
hanging off the branch of this tree.

There is the lichen that lives under the stream, at full torrent. Flat to the rock,
        a dark dried-blood colour.
The long pocket of air, in the lee of a rock, that flips on and off
irregularly.

Strange convergence
this pattern, these flecks
on this hard wood, like limbs to the palm
that has the bark like loose socks
gunaikos, of woman, rucked up

gaunt bark, many-holed

round a vacancy.

Little scutterings of snow, trundling down the slope ahead,
diminishing.

The thick sough of the wind.

The soughing of a thousand trees, range to range, as the darkness closes.

V

but lo, the bracken sprouts
& curls
cet immense pouvoir
qui se déferle
with the bronze-bright shaggy pelt
waiting to unfurl
spray of broken-down ferns
splayed from the centre
studded with them.

Colonies of pale and paler lichens
that meet like clouds or sea-wrack
and the bark already cracked

souls fade,
or there would be an encumbering in the world?
far-off surf in the pinetops
thick naked light on the scarred trunks

Leaf ironed out to a fullness,
old bamboo hard like ivory

a fullness; a stillness; present;
not etched but there.

Always with their tops chawed off
tips chawed off
the great phalloi
bamboo thrusting out of the ground

the green not vivid but virulent
the flat mirror of water with the border of mud
with ragged banks
so flat, so delicate
waiting to be disturbed
with feet and with plantings.

And under the roughened, fast-moving
water
the shadow of a frond, waving.

"I need help!"

huelp

Heavy surf, not far:
the storm working itself up in the treetops.
On the mountain, the cedars thrash,
the ribbed water rushing.

never bent
she knew she was a nuisance
never gave myself up to her
till 2-3 days before she died.

The halberds on the bronzes like these leaves;
the silvery-green fly-like creatures
flit about them intently.

VI

'You are very calm about all this'

horrent et tremunt
and into the drowning-boats

and out of the dark cabin, the voice of a radio
and the two lights of slightly diff erent tones
the white and the slightly yellow

tussocks under snow.

Tired and glazed and as if pulled square by the plastic surgery
gazing at me
flatly, making no argument.

Betrayed and hiding nothing.

Keeping my options open:
ne manquez pas l'épisode où vous gagnez

(coming down from the Sacré-Coeur past the closed-in bar)

Piles of boxes of neatly packed
cigarette packs, and maybe one of them will have the Key.

Under the thick sheet of water
ribbed, rushing
an eye of air.

A scattering of thin silver cigarette foils
on the black ash, like paper to the touch now they've been burned.
On the heap of rice-straw mats; then the flood from the typhoon took them.

The first answer was always 'No'.

In the stillness
the watersound cut off by the pass
the wraiths move on the mountain
the tiny waterpattering
and the owl behind me.

A very remote light there down by the roadside
a bit like a firefly

the mountain blocked off by the mist
and then again the dog-barks.

Motif: the monotone,
with a little relief
and texturing,
senza struttura
architettura
gotta get above the field-line
to drink water without poison
to where the snow lies yet
unmelted
Skeletons of old eyes
cracking
where they should have moved

O ye whom
I pass by
when I pass by the Yodogawa Christian Hospital
will you be satisfied?

with your monument, when I have made it
quod non imber edax

Afraid; dried; paralysed;
denied her thrice.

Steadily over the years

in small émiettements, witherings and closings:

"When I have got this done,
then we will have castles in Spain."

con smaldi, with tiles, with green and blue
and the dark spaces in the garden
where you will be

Bluffly accepting her, denying her. Denied her thrice.

Videt peccator et tabescet
I, PJMakin, under the ribbed water, by the Ark, with head down
floating south

Eat some raisins,
couple the synapses,
gender more words.

VII

Fight back silly tears, all is not lost
that is lost, and
you will never be young again.
"Why did you take my bright cloak?

I will never get back to heaven-road now; wander
this keck-end of world
lonely for brightness;

give me back my bright cloak?"

Flitting souls
wander in this waste,
not knowing what they have done,
that it was their chance;

that they blurred it, mucked it around
like a cat with a shrew, or a flower
kicked to death by passers-by;
and wonder why Dante was Dante.

                    You,
will have to wait
                    in the land of nothing
while your sister eats.

Peter Makin grew up in Lincolnshire and Mali, and was educated in London (under Eric Mottram) and Paris. For the last 25 years he has lived in Japan, where he teaches literature and writes (Pound's Cantos: Johns Hopkins U.P.; Bunting: The Shaping of his Verse: OUP; [ed.] Basil Bunting on Poetry: Johns Hopkins U.P.).