4th Poem from Japan - veeeery bloated, please help me hack off some of the extra limb
EvilToasterElf
Posts: 1,119
This poem attempts in its way to document my trip to Hiroshima on the anniversary of the first atomic bomb used in war.
Flickering
The park was overflowing, the masses
lent all their colors to the grey piers.
All around us were the preparations
for memory. I hold one of the endless
paper chains of origami cranes, woven
with a Japanese attention to detail.
For weeks school children had crafted
paper boxes to hold the candles around the
last remaining building of old Hiroshima.
Grandparents and grandchildren, mothers
and fathers, tourists and travelers, had labored
at tables in the park, to decorate the lanterns
that would float downriver, like the words
of a song just beyond memory. The music
though, forever lingers in those dark places
that words cannot enter. They are filled
instead by thousands of small Japanese flags,
peace signs, calligraphy names, and badly drawn
families holding hands. Occasionally, I spot
a Canadian flag, or messages in proper English;
but it seems shame can follow us
from the years long before we knew shame.
There are no American flags here, anywhere.
Poles of varying lengths are brought out,
and planted in the shrubbery surrounding
the last crumbling symbol of shock and awe.
One building that remained after the bomb
was left alone, a black fence was erected,
and when stones drop from the façade,
they are not replaced. The sun comes through
the space where walls should be. The air
around me chimes with the robotic clicks
of digital cameras. As the sun descends,
The Motoyasu River is bisected
by a string of skiffs, loaded with paper lanterns.
The riverbanks fill with flesh, preparing
for nightfall. None of the foreigners
know what to expect. Japan is the perfect
country to come to terms with collective guilt,
the obvious accusations are never hurled
at strangers, though vengeance has a way
of transcending culpability. Here I stand
five feet from the first ground zero,
and five years from the last. The candles
slowly consume a small portion of the night.
Where the day was jubilant, the night
is surreal and silent. The masses of people
blur in the candle light as they pass. Colors
only exist near the tiny flames, the living
have traded their space for the memory
of the dead. Shadows and ghosts play
on the sidewalks, while the candles scream
their light through the thin, colored screens
floating downriver. Thousands were consumed
here in a ball of flame, and now thousands live
on through those fleeting children of infernos.
Did Prometheus make his eternal sacrifice
in the name of irony?
The lanterns emerge from the banks,
and from the river itself. Though scattered
at first, they are all joined by the current,
one fiercely glowing tapeworm of regret,
squirming out of sight. A few of these lights
never make it to the current though, some
toss in the wind, fade to black, and sink.
What happens to the world, when its symbols
die? One lantern among thousands, one digit
in a statistic, one overturned grave, among
a mountain of granite. How much of ourselves
is floating down this river? This train of lights
shimmers like an oil slick rainbow
in a parking lot puddle. It is an unexpected
moment of clarity. I walk to a nearby bridge,
and the dead swim beneath me, and appear
on the other side. Already, the lanterns dim.
No longer held by children, or released
into the water by widowed grandmothers
barely able to walk, these candles lose
their power. The dirt shoveled over
our loved ones fades into a rhythm
when we can no longer hear the hollow
thuds of the earth hitting the casket.
There is something powerful at work
on August 6, in Hiroshima. For some
the dead return, like a familiar story
in a lost corner of the family quilt.
Pictures swim back into the present,
after they fall from the dusty shelves.
For me though, there is the dull throbbing
like a muscle falling asleep. When I move
back to the broken building, one of the candles
has lit its paper prison. When I lean in I see
a peace sign slowly disappearing in the curled,
black radius of the fire before I blow it out.
Some of us will leave our footprints
in the apocalypse, as others watch their candles
float silently downstream, distantly aware
that somewhere in the procession of flames
is their own prayer. Even if they don’t know it,
someone they love, as someone I love,
seethes in blue, or green, or red, on the water,
and moves away, carrying a tiny, bright piece
of us with them. Hiroshima is a struggle,
a daily battle against the idea that time heals.
Time is measured here by how much has been erased,
by how much of the past will never return,
ao they build a paper fortress against the erosion
of memory, and watch it burn, year after year,
like those blue beams piercing the sky,
from the footprints of the world trade center,
like the names of the fallen, the faces
of the forgotten, and the words of wisdom
the dead offer in their silence, in the melody
of a thousand candles, hissing, as they tumble,
one by one into the dark sea.
Flickering
The park was overflowing, the masses
lent all their colors to the grey piers.
All around us were the preparations
for memory. I hold one of the endless
paper chains of origami cranes, woven
with a Japanese attention to detail.
For weeks school children had crafted
paper boxes to hold the candles around the
last remaining building of old Hiroshima.
Grandparents and grandchildren, mothers
and fathers, tourists and travelers, had labored
at tables in the park, to decorate the lanterns
that would float downriver, like the words
of a song just beyond memory. The music
though, forever lingers in those dark places
that words cannot enter. They are filled
instead by thousands of small Japanese flags,
peace signs, calligraphy names, and badly drawn
families holding hands. Occasionally, I spot
a Canadian flag, or messages in proper English;
but it seems shame can follow us
from the years long before we knew shame.
There are no American flags here, anywhere.
Poles of varying lengths are brought out,
and planted in the shrubbery surrounding
the last crumbling symbol of shock and awe.
One building that remained after the bomb
was left alone, a black fence was erected,
and when stones drop from the façade,
they are not replaced. The sun comes through
the space where walls should be. The air
around me chimes with the robotic clicks
of digital cameras. As the sun descends,
The Motoyasu River is bisected
by a string of skiffs, loaded with paper lanterns.
The riverbanks fill with flesh, preparing
for nightfall. None of the foreigners
know what to expect. Japan is the perfect
country to come to terms with collective guilt,
the obvious accusations are never hurled
at strangers, though vengeance has a way
of transcending culpability. Here I stand
five feet from the first ground zero,
and five years from the last. The candles
slowly consume a small portion of the night.
Where the day was jubilant, the night
is surreal and silent. The masses of people
blur in the candle light as they pass. Colors
only exist near the tiny flames, the living
have traded their space for the memory
of the dead. Shadows and ghosts play
on the sidewalks, while the candles scream
their light through the thin, colored screens
floating downriver. Thousands were consumed
here in a ball of flame, and now thousands live
on through those fleeting children of infernos.
Did Prometheus make his eternal sacrifice
in the name of irony?
The lanterns emerge from the banks,
and from the river itself. Though scattered
at first, they are all joined by the current,
one fiercely glowing tapeworm of regret,
squirming out of sight. A few of these lights
never make it to the current though, some
toss in the wind, fade to black, and sink.
What happens to the world, when its symbols
die? One lantern among thousands, one digit
in a statistic, one overturned grave, among
a mountain of granite. How much of ourselves
is floating down this river? This train of lights
shimmers like an oil slick rainbow
in a parking lot puddle. It is an unexpected
moment of clarity. I walk to a nearby bridge,
and the dead swim beneath me, and appear
on the other side. Already, the lanterns dim.
No longer held by children, or released
into the water by widowed grandmothers
barely able to walk, these candles lose
their power. The dirt shoveled over
our loved ones fades into a rhythm
when we can no longer hear the hollow
thuds of the earth hitting the casket.
There is something powerful at work
on August 6, in Hiroshima. For some
the dead return, like a familiar story
in a lost corner of the family quilt.
Pictures swim back into the present,
after they fall from the dusty shelves.
For me though, there is the dull throbbing
like a muscle falling asleep. When I move
back to the broken building, one of the candles
has lit its paper prison. When I lean in I see
a peace sign slowly disappearing in the curled,
black radius of the fire before I blow it out.
Some of us will leave our footprints
in the apocalypse, as others watch their candles
float silently downstream, distantly aware
that somewhere in the procession of flames
is their own prayer. Even if they don’t know it,
someone they love, as someone I love,
seethes in blue, or green, or red, on the water,
and moves away, carrying a tiny, bright piece
of us with them. Hiroshima is a struggle,
a daily battle against the idea that time heals.
Time is measured here by how much has been erased,
by how much of the past will never return,
ao they build a paper fortress against the erosion
of memory, and watch it burn, year after year,
like those blue beams piercing the sky,
from the footprints of the world trade center,
like the names of the fallen, the faces
of the forgotten, and the words of wisdom
the dead offer in their silence, in the melody
of a thousand candles, hissing, as they tumble,
one by one into the dark sea.
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Comments
I read the above like prose or journalism, even... I don't know what to say about that, or how to fix it, or if you should cut it or re-write it. It's well written, to be sure, but to me... it's not "poetry"
beautiful writing, evil...
thanks very much for letting us share
Rachel
Also, I have been trying to find a record store around here, the one I found closed down a week after I discovered it.
Time is measured here by how much has been erased,
by how much of the past will never return,
ao they build a paper fortress against the erosion
of memory, and watch it burn, year after year
Maybe you could create a simultaneity between the past and the present, to show how "present" the spectre of Hiroshima is, still. That doesn't mean that you have to write in the present tense when alluding to the past. That would perhaps be too arty, and would cheapen the point. Perhaps what I mean is, cut out the passages that "tell" and keep the images that "show" the continuing aftermath of August 6th, 1945. That way the mind will form associations between images of the atomic holocaust, and today.
As for the journalistic approach to poetry, you're in good company. Read Louis MacNeice's "Autumn Journal".
oh, and btw... you don't have to go record shopping for me. the logistics are too much for my decaf-life, anymore. but i do appreciate the effort
muchas gracias!