“I Wonder….”, poem from “Pitcher of Moon”.

“Early Autumn Dusk”, oil, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2003

The devestation of 50 tornadoes out in the Midwest, and the incredible destruction of Moore, Ok, makes poetry almost…well, there are events more important that should take our attention right now. Apparently, news is saying these storms will continue to devestate the same general area, moving eastward. My thoughts and prayers are with the people facing the destruction of their property and of lost of life. I am numb right now. The scope of this disaster is incomprehensible to me.

Lady Nyo

–

I Wonder…..

I wonder about myself,
The mourning, the sorrow,
A low flame inside
Flaring with memory
Burrowing deep,
Always a shadow of flame
Intruding upon my day
Throwing me back
Into a murky past
Where I am rattled by its force
Its grip–
An unwelcome visitation.

I cover the sadness
With a silk blouse,
A mask for a face,
An unsteady smile.
Order for the outside
Hiding chaos within.

My father’s death had me
Travel from hatred to love
Finally understanding this old man
Who could not say “I love you”,
But did.

When he was close to death
I washed his body
Bathed this feeble old man,
Emptied of power, rage
Returned to innocence
Now forgivably human.

When my mother is dead, finally dead
Will I travel this same path
From hatred to love?
Will I rewrite history
Me to forget anger,
Her with an ember of love,
To end the remorse
To make more of a ‘mother’
To bury her with love?

I started out from love
But it grew to hate.
Life can do these things,
And when I aged
It started to reverse
Half way back.

But it never really makes the full circle
For the wounds are deep
And memories hurt like hell.
Perhaps only time will tell
In this fugue of life.
Perhaps it will come to be
A dull blanket of forgetfulness
Thrown over the past
That segues to forgiveness –
….in time.

=

There is a marvelous blog at http://n-continuum.blogspot.com that I have been reading for a few years. The woman who writes there is incredible in her understanding of narcissism, maternal and general narcissism. I recommend this website highly. CZBZ has an extraordinary grasp of these psychological issues that plague so many families.

“Pitcher of Moon” will be published soon at Lulu.com. I want to thank Bill Penrose for his work and digilance in formatting and bringing this manuscript to publishing, Nick Nicholson for his reading and advice and Bren Goode for her advice and friendship. These three people are the best friends a writer could have. I am deeply grateful for all of them.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

“The Jungle”….a very short story.

Don’t count on Political Correctness in this story.

She first saw him walking up the street, the oaks and pecans with their shadowy branches waving over the pavement like brooms. The soft morning breeze was a blessing; the heat even during mid-spring would make itself known in a few hours.

He was an old man, a Negro, she could see by his naked forearms. He was thin, with a baseball cap on his greying nappy head. She would learn his name was Roosevelt Jackson, and later would be called “Mr. Roosevelt” by her family. He was walking on the sidewalk, something that only some of the more decent and older blacks did: around here their race walked in the street, sometimes taking up the whole width of it, challenging the cars with their collective girth. She couldn’t understand why they tempted fate with this behavior, but decided it was these long haired ponytailed lawyers who started their commercials on TV with: “Have you been hit? Call me for Justice!” Like the lottery, they enticed these people with some get- rich -schemes, though they were betting on the better drivers to see and avoid them. She always wondered. There were drunks enough on the road, some also doped up on whatever was their drug and it was like Russian Roulette on the streets of this city.

One of the local lowlife-crack-head living across the fields of kudzu and railroad tracks had again broken into her shed. He had stolen what he could get, or thrown stuff over the fence before she and the dogs heard him. She got the pistol from under the old, unstrung baby grand piano and went out to scare him, the bastard.

He had jumped the fence and was hiding behind a 100 year old oak. This had become an annoying game, played over and over. She called her dogs to sic him and he moved into view. She didn’t have the spirit to shoot him; plus he was over the fence. She knew the law, but he didn’t. Or he did but didn’t care. Stealing was a way of life for him, he didn’t care what he took, he could fence anything for some beer or crack. He jogged away in his curious zig-zagging gait, his hands full before him with her property, knowing that she ‘could’ shoot him, but also knowing she wouldn’t. He had left the shed a mess. his big black feet had stomped on china, lamps, books and vinyl records. It didn’t matter to him. Just something to plunder. This was why she was out on the sidewalk that morning, hauling broken now-junk from there. Whatever he stole, he missed a coin collection of her dead father in law. There were old silver dollars fallen out of a photo album. They lay glittering in the gutter.

The old man came walking up and tipped his cap, bidding her good morning. He was dark, thin, and had a rope for a belt. She remembered her husband once appeared with a rope around his waist because he couldn’t find a belt upstairs. Men were like that.

He asked her if she had a job for him. She took a long look at him before answering. She asked him a few questions, but thought he was harmless enough. He told her he worked for $3.00 a day cleaning up garbage at the gas station down the street and around the corner. When she was passing in her car, she saw the garbage people had dumped during the night. It was a favorite site for this. The people that worked at the gas station were Pakistani and not nice to him. He was old, black and they were young and pushed him around, thinking him not of any value. $3.00 a day. Lordy. She looked down and saw a silver dollar in the gutter. She stooped and gave it to him for some unknown reason. She wasn’t of a nature where she gave out charity, being burned before, but for some reason, this old man moved something in her. His eyes widened as he turned the coin over and over in his hand. She thought he might cry.

Over the months Mr. Roosevelt came for a few hours for $15.00 dollars a half-day and lunch. He moved the wood pile; he moved a brick pile, he buried a cat, but mostly he worked at odd jobs around the property and talked to her only child who she was homeschooling after a fashion. Mr. Roosevelt was a mentor to him, telling stories from decades before, a lifetime and a culture removed, showing him how to stack a wood pile so it didn’t fall over, being kind to a lonely child.

Mr. Roosevelt had one quirk. He would sit quietly outside on a stump for half an hour after eating his half sandwich. He would wrap up the other half for dinner in a handkerchief to take home with him. She tried to get him, skinny as he was, to eat the whole sandwich, but he never would. When he was asked why he sat idle for that half hour by her son, he said it was for digestion. That working immediately after eating was like swimming right after a meal. You could harm yourself.

Her husband decided to rip off a roof and start an addition on the house. He hired Mr. Roosevelt to help him. When he found out that she was only paying him $15.00 a half day, he yelled at her: Roosevelt was worth more than that and gave him a lot more for his labor. She countered she had never had a ‘yard man’ and she was trying to be economical. Mr. Roosevelt heard the argument between them, and just smiled. He knew he couldn’t lose in this one.

For about a year, Mr. Roosevelt showed up just about every week. One week he didn’t, and she went looking for him, driving up to his neighborhood, which was a few blocks from hers. Mr. Roosevelt had died of a heart attack. He had been robbed a few days before, these lowlife wanna- be gangster boys coming in his house as he watched tv and taking the tv and even the stewpot from his stove. He could survive that, but a few days later a pit bull that was loose bit him and it was too much for his old heart.

In a city that has devolved to outright crime and violence over the decades, no respect for property, no respect for life, stealing what you can from strangers or neighbors, Mr. Roosevelt was one of the few decent elements left. He taught by example. He was by nature as bright as that coin that first began their meeting. A man who can keep his nature as good as Mr. Roosevelt isn’t born every minute, to any race. He was a rarity in this age. Fifteen years later, she still missed and remembered him.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

Ono no Komachi…Sensual Poems of a Medieval Japanese Poet

I’ve written before on this blog about Ono no Komachi. She continues to capture my interest as a woman and a poet.

Briefly, she lived from 834?-??. It’s not clear when she died. She served in Japan’s Heian court (then in Kyoto) and was one of the dominant poetic geniuses. She is also in the great Man’yoshu, a collection of 4500 poems.

She lived when a woman was considered to be educated once she composed, memorized and could recite 1000 poems. Her poetry is deeply subjective, passionate and complex. She was a pivotal figure, legendary in Japanese literary history.

The form: these are written in tanka form…the usual form of poetry most popular.

Don’t be put off by the lack of syllables or more than for the lines. These poems are translated into English and they don’t necessarily fit the form exactly.

There are parts of the world where her poetry is still studied and read. These cultures are richer for the doing, as are their poets.

Lady Nyo

–

Did he appear
Because I fell asleep
Thinking of him?
If only I’d known I was dreaming
I’d never have awakened.

–

When my desire
Grows too fierce
I wear my bed clothes
Inside out,
Dark as the night’s rough husk.

–

My longing for you—
Too strong to keep within bounds.
At least no one can blame me
When I go to you at night
Along the road of dreams.

–

One of her most famous poems:

No way to see him
On this moonless night—
I lie awake longing, burning,
Breasts racing fire,
Heart in flames.

–

Night deepens
With the sound of calling deer,
And I hear
My own one-sided love.

–

The cicadas sing
In the twilight
Of my mountain village—
Tonight, no one
Will visit save the wind.

–

A diver does not abandon
A seaweed-filled bay.
Will you then turn away
From this floating, sea-foam body
That waits for your gathering hands?

–

Is this love reality
Or a dream?
I cannot know,
When both reality and dreams
Exist without truly existing.

–

My personal favorite:

The autumn night
Is long only in name—
We’ve done no more
Than gaze at each other
And it’s already dawn.

–

This morning
Even my morning glories
Are hiding,
Not wanting to show
Their sleep-mussed hair.

–

I thought to pick
The flower of forgetting
For myself,
But I found it
Already growing in his heart.

–

Since this body
Was forgotten
By the one who promised to come,
My only thought is wondering
Whether it even exists.

All these poems were compiled from the Man’yoshu and the book, “The Ink Dark Moon”, by Hirshfield and Aratani.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

Kobayashi Issa, (1763-1827) A Haiku Poet with Enormous Heart

sky in the NorthEast, Jane Kohut-Bartels, June 25, 2012

I have had “The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa” for a few years and have only really read to Basho. But recently reading Issa, (Issa means Cup-of-Tea), the world of haiku opened up in ways I didn’t expect.

What is remarkable about Issa’s poetry is the compassion for the lowest of creatures (insects, etc.), the deep interest in the commonalities of life, compassion for humanity, and the joyful celebration of the ordinary.

Haiku can be a perplexing poetry form. Recently I have read a lot of bad haiku. I’ve written about this before. (I’ve also written bad haiku myself) It seems people throw together observations and call it haiku. It generally isn’t. There are ‘rules’ and structures for this poetry form, and it seems that many people who attempt haiku have no regard for even reading or researching some of these fundamentals. If they started with a reading and research of renga, they would get some background of haiku, or hokku, which is what haiku was first called.

Renga, or linked verse, is marvelous to read. One poet starts with a three line poem, another picks it up, and so on. They can go on for a hundred linked poems or more. Usually accompanied by sake.

What was remarkable of renga, and later of haiku…is the shifts and dissolves that remind one of early surrealist films. And there are some modernist poets, like Ezra Pound’s XXX Cantos, or even better, Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” that comes near to the renga spirit, this shifting and resolve.
But the Buddhist tradition embraced this shifting and resolve. Renga, and then haiku, have a way of embracing this life, this transitory nature of all things.

I came across a part of a 14th century treatise on poetry:

“Contemplate deeply the vicissitudes of the life of man and body, always keep in your heart the image of mujo (ephemerality) and when you go to the mountains or the sea, feel the pathos (aware) of the karma of sentient beings and non-sentient things. Give feeling to those things without a heart (mushintai no mono) and through your own heart express their beauty (yugen) in a delicate form.”(from “Basho and the Way of Poetry in the Japanese Religious Tradition”)

Again, haiku isn’t as simple as it seems. But it’s direct, forceful and of a keenness that satisfies.

People complain of the ‘oddness’ of haiku. Perhaps it is this ‘shifts and resolve’ embedded in the form. To me, Issa has less of this than Basho or Buson. There is a directness and compassion of Issa that deeply involves the heart and eyes.

And a deep sense of the absurb and a great sense of humor in Issa.

My words will not convince anyone. But perhaps examples of Issa will.

Lady Nyo

Haiku of Issa: from The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass

New Year’s Day—
Everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

The snow is melting
And the village is flooded
With children.

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
Casually.

Goes out,
Comes back—
The loves of a cat.

Children imitating cormorants
Are even more wonderful
Than cormorants.

O flea! Whatever you do,
Don’t jump;
That way is the river.

In this world
We walk on the roof of hell,
Gazing at flowers.

Don’t kill that fly!
Look—it’s wringing its hands
Wringing its feet.

I’m going out,
Flies, so relax,
Make love.

(approaching his village)

Don’t know about the people,
But all the scarecrows
Are crooked.

A huge frog and I,
Staring at each other,
Neither of us moves.

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
Killing mosquitoes.

What good luck!
Bitten by
This year’s mosquitoes too.

The bedbug
Scatter as I clean,
Parents and children.

And my personal favorite…

Zealous flea,
You’re about to be a Buddha
By my hand.

some of my own, struggling with the form.

Dogwoods are blooming
The crucifixion appears
White moths in the night

A frog with moon eyes
Sits staring in the path.
Is he stone or flesh?

Billowing spring winds
Blow pollen in crevices
The water floats green.

The moon howls tonight.
Perhaps the dogs entice it.
Chickens are restless.

A fox on the prowl
This bitter cold spring night.
Dried grasses rustle.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

“Spring Storm”….from “Pitcher of Moon”

…hopefully to be published soon.

SPRING STORM

The wind howls tonight
Races round eaves,
Disturbs the haunts in the attic,
Forces wind chimes
Into a metal hambone frenzy
The clash of harmony grates
On ears, on nerves–
no sleep for this night.

There is death to the west
Fear in the vanguard.

It is springtime,
No gentle embrace
Just a blaze of destruction, despair.
Sanctuary
Is far down on the ground,
Deep as a cellar
Deep as a ditch.

The moon above,
That sickly green sphere
Is in on the game.

The dogs howl
A Greek chorus
Echoing their primal fear
Over the landscape.

Each moan of wind
Heralds the apocalypse,
My eyes squeeze shut
Against grating of branches,
The rattle of panes
As I grasp for sanity
In an insane night.

I ride out the storm,
Dawn breaks,
The silence complete,
The earth placid and calm
As if the night before
Only a nightmare-
And I’m ridden from sleep
To the usual ground.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

7 Spring Haiku, 1 Tanka, 1 Poem, 1 Cinquain….

Printemps

Some Haiku…

A pale crescent moon
The sky colored lavender
Nothing more to wish.

Acid green pollen
Stains the landscape of spring
Life-force of Nature.

Morning glories bloom
Entangling wrought-iron fence
Warms the cold metal.

Dawn east-sky moon glows
A thin half-cup spills on soil
Seeds stretch out their arms.

Under a crescent moon
The black soil of the garden
Anticipates life.

Tibetan earthworms
Bring a halt to all labor
Here? Feed lazy koi.

Swifts- dark crescent moons
Sickles cutting through the dusk
Tag the slower bats.

One Cinquain…

Petals
like infant ghosts
fall mute on tender grass,
the wind rocks their woody cradles,
lulls them.

One Tanka….

Smell of rose blossoms
draws me around a corner
A black cat sits there
The finest brocade can not
Equal this petal softness.

In the Garden at Dawn

Dawn east-sky moon gleam
A golden half-cup greets the garden,
Hands deep in soil
Planting tender shoots of life
With a reverence feeding the soul
As seedlings feed flesh later to come.

There is God in this black soil,
Earthworms and tiny bits of life
Independent of will or wishes.
Golden moonbeams spill on this tilled earth
Like a benediction or blessing,
And bathes plants and planter with promise.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2012,2013

The Grooming Behavior of a Sexual Predator

Last week I received a phone call from an uncle. He is an 86 year old man who has been married three times, and now lives alone in a trailer in the mountains. I have had no contact with this relative for over 50 years, except when I saw him at my father’s funeral in 1989.

This summer he started calling me. I was delighted because I have no contact with anyone from my mother’s family. But my guard was down and I didn’t know what was to come.

This uncle was considered a ‘run around’ when my aunt (who died last week at 89) divorced him after finding a girdle (not hers!) in the glove compartment of their car. This uncle also had three children, two daughters and a son who died a couple of years ago.

When I was a child and then a teen, my father took great measures to protect my virtue and my safety from other men. He was Hungarian, and had 5 brothers. They were protective of their daughters and also me. When my father died, my Uncle Zoltan made sure I didn’t feel I didn’t have that support anymore. He was wonderful and supportive in my grief. Then a few years ago he died. All my uncles have died except this 86 year old man.

Apparently, when I was a very young teenager, one neighbor made a sexual comment about me and my father cold cocked him and threw him out of the car. Hopefully while it was still moving. My father was a very gentle man and non-violent, but this was where he drew the line.

I was fortunate in having such a parent. Many women don’t and they suffer because of the lack. My father was my champion my entire life, though I didn’t realize it until a few years before his death.

This uncle started calling me around June of last year. He wanted to visit us in Atlanta. He kept pressing me about this, phone call after phone call. I didn’t really want him here because our house is still under renovation and the stairs are steep in this 1880’s house. He apparently walks with a cane and there were risks to his safety. However, as the phone calls continued, I realize this uncle was rather….weird.

He knew I had been a belly dancer and just about every call he made he mentioned my dancing for him. It made me uncomfortable. And it should have.

A one point he made mention that he was on Viagra. I didn’t pick up on what he was attempting. Last week he called and told me that “when I was a teen and he saw me in a bathing suit, he masturbated.”

I was shocked into silence. I felt numb. What 86 year old man says this to a niece? A perverted old man, a child predator. A man very sick in the head.

In one blow I felt violated. I felt dirty. I was completely innocent of any wrong doing, but I blamed myself. This is common with women who are abused in some way. There was no reason, it was illogical, and I realize that, but when a relative, who is supposed to protect family does this…it is horrible. There is bound to be fallout.

I felt ashamed of my own sexuality. And this is rotten, again illogical. I have nothing to be ashamed about. This is what a sexual predator does, and it weakens the confidence of the victim. I was all of 15? What man gets aroused by a girl at 15? A child predator.

I talked to Liz my dear, older therapist. Apparently he was ‘grooming’ me for his advantage. I studied psychology for years but forgot this ‘grooming’ issue. These phone calls, at first innocent enough, were then progressing (on his part) to see whether I was ‘interested’, how he could entice me. This is the route predators take. But it was in tiny increments so I wouldn’t pick up on his intentions so fast.

I was not interested. I went from uncomfortable to outrage. He has two grown daughters, amongst other children from other marriages. Did he do the same when he saw them in bathing suits? I don’t want to know, but I do know that I will never, ever speak to him again.

Had my dear father known what he was about, he would have done much more than cold-cocking him. Now that my husband knows what he is about he better never come around. My husband will deal with him in the sharpest terms. And so will a number of my male relatives and friends. Hell, my German Shepherd will make him sorry for breathing.

In trying to understand this issue of ‘grooming’….I came across a statement from “Abuse Survivor”:

“Sexual offenses are most often planned. They are not usually impulsive acts or mistakes. Sexual offenders do things to “set up” potential victims in an effort to manipulate them into sexual situations. Some grooming behaviors are done to try to get the potential victim interested in the offender or to see how the potential victim may react if a sexual advance is made. Grooming is part of a process in the actions offenders engage in that leads up to the actual offense. Grooming can also involve threats, bribes, or coercive acts. Grooming behaviors are sexual abuse “red flags.” Coercion is when tricks, power, status, threats, bribes, drugs, alcohol, or force is used to manipulating a person into doing something. The pedophile four F’s are Friendship, Fantasy, Fear, Force. “

This ‘uncle’ didn’t get beyond the first of proffered ‘friendship’. That was a blessing for me.

What a nasty, dirty old man! I guess perverts come in all ages.

My husband (and my dear cousin Donnie, who is the son of Uncle Zoltan) and friends have been wonderfully supportive. I still am reeling from this last phone call, but now at least, I can put him out of my life for a very good and solid reason. He is a predator and I can understand why he is alone. I have no sympathy for him. God perhaps will forgive his behavior, but I don’t have to.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

April Cinquins…..

It’s been a long time since I have written cinquains, but they are fun and sometimes pleasing little pieces of poetry.

Lady Nyo

APRIL Cinquains

.

Petals
like infant ghosts
fall mute on tender grass,
the wind rocks their woody cradles,
lulls them.

The moon,
passes quickly
through white clouds in black sky
and all around is the silence
of dreams.

The heat
of love wavers,
inconsistent sea tides.
Better the constancy of lust.
Primal.

I dream
so many things.
Inarticulate lumps
grafted upon a life well worn,
forgotten.

Panting,
Gasping for air
I surface in your lust
Swimming in this sea of desire,
I drown.

Quiet
birds! I have not
metaphors for you yet.
Just awake, I shake sleep from eyes
gather thoughts and compose
poems round your
“Wake up!”

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

“The Stillness of Death”, from “The Nightingale’s Song”

I’M GOING TO BE OFFLINE FOR A FEW DAYS….COMPUTER ISSUES AND WHEN IT’S FIXED I MAKE THE ROUNDS OF OTHER BLOGS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

JANE

Introduction to “The Nightingale’s Song”

In Old Japan there was an even older daimyo called Lord Mori who lived in the shadow of Moon Mountain, far up in the Northwest of Japan. Lord Mori ran a court that did little except keep his men (and himself) entertained with drinking, hawking and hunting. Affairs of state were loosely examined and paperwork generally lost, misplaced under a writing table or under a pile of something more entertaining to his Lordship. Sometimes even under the robes of a young courtesan.

Every other year the Emperor in Edo would demand all the daimyos travel to his court for a year. This was a clever idea of the honorable Emperor. It kept them from each other’s throats, plundering each other’s land, and made them all accountable to Edo and the throne.

Lord Mori was fortunate in his exemption of having to travel the months to sit in attendance on the Emperor. He was awarded this exemption with pitiful letters to the court complaining of age, ill health and general infirmities. He sent his eldest, rather stupid son to comply with the Emperor’s wishes. He agreed to have this disappointing young man stay in Edo to attend the Emperor. Probably forever.

Lord Mori, however, continued to hunt, hawk and generally enjoy life in the hinterlands.

True, his realm, his fiefdom, was tucked away in mountains hard to cross. To travel to Edo took months because of bad roads, fast rivers and mountain passages. A daimyo was expected to assemble a large entourage for this trip: vassals, brass polishers, flag carriers, outriders, a train of horses and mules to carry all the supplies, litters for the women, litters for advisors and fortune tellers, and then of course, his samurai. His train of honor could be four thousand men or more!

But this tale isn’t about Lord Mori. It’s about one of his generals, his vassal, Lord Nyo and his wife, Lady Nyo, who was born from a branch of a powerful clan, though a clan who had lost standing at the court in Edo.

Now, just for the curious, Lord Nyo is an old samurai, scarred in battle, ugly as most warriors are, and at a lost when it comes to the refinement and elegance of life– especially poetry. His Lady Nyo is fully half his age, a delicate and thoughtful woman,
though without issue.

But Lord and Lady Nyo don’t fill these pages alone. There are other characters; priests, magical events, samurai and a particularly tricky Tengu who will entertain any reader of this tale.

A full moon, as in many Japanese tales, figures in the mix. As do poetry, some historic and some bad. War and battles, love and hate. But this is like life. There is no getting one without the other.

The present Lady Nyo, descended from generations past.

THE STILLNESS OF DEATH

“My heart, like my clothing
Is saturated with your fragrance.
Your vows of fidelity
Were made to our pillow and not to me.”
—-12th century

Kneeling before her tea
Lady Nyo did not move.
She barely breathed-
Tomorrow depended
Upon her action today.

Lord Nyo was drunk again.
When in his cups
The household scattered.
Beneath the kitchen
Was the crawl space
Where three servants
Where hiding.
A fourth wore an iron pot.

Lord Nyo was known
For three things:
Archery-
Temper-
And drink.

Tonight he strung
His seven foot bow,
Donned his quiver
High on his back.
He looked at the pale face
Of his aging wife,
His eyes blurry, unfocused.
He remembered the first time
pillowing her.

She was fifteen.
Her body powdered petals,
Bones like butter,
Black hair like trailing bo silk.
The blush of shy passion
Had coursed through veins
Like a tinted stream.

Still beautiful
Now too fragile for his taste.
Better a plump whore,
Than this delicate, saddened beauty.

He drew back the bow
In quick succession
Let five arrows pierce
The shoji.
Each grazed the shell ear
Of his wife.

Life hung on her stillness.
She willed herself dead.
Death after all these years
Would have been welcome.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted , 2013

“The Nightingale’s Song”, a short introduction to these poems….

A little over a year ago I started a series of long poems, ultimately titled “The Nightingale’s Song”. This became a collection of twelve poems, set in 17th century Japan. It was a saga of two people, a married couple named Lord and Lady Nyo.

I loved these poems. They were highly emotional, what I hoped was a ‘slice of life’ of a samurai couple of that era. Some time before, I came across the great 8th century document, “The Man’yoshu”. This was a collection of over 4500 poems of various themes, but many of them love poems. They had such an impact upon me that I still am reading various editions of these poems. While writing what was to become “The Nightingale’s Song”, it seemed these 8th century poems spoke directly to the life of my own characters, and I wrapped some of them around the behavior and emotions of these two. People who haven’t read “The Man’yoshu” have little understanding the power of these poems: they speak directly to us through the centuries, to our inner most emotions, dilemmas, concerns. Human nature doesn’t change much over time. These poems are a testament to the power of love and longing between men and women.

Very recently I suggested to a good friend, Nick Nicholson, from Canberra, Australia, that he collaborate on this new book with me. He is a wonderful writer and poet on his own, but this time Nick will be using another talent: he will be contributing photographs to this book. He will be doing much more than this and I am very grateful for the chance to work in such concrete and deeper ways with a friend of over seven years.

Even though there is a lot of work on “The Nightingale’s Song” to be done, I am posting something of a ‘prologue’ just to introduce these poems. I don’t know how many I will post on this blog in the future, but enough I hope to interest readers. I especially want to thank the readers from Japan and other Asian countries. Your support, and occasional comments, encourage the writing here.

Lady Nyo
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In Old Japan there was an even older daimyo called Lord Mori who lived in the shadow of Moon Mountain, far up in the Northwest of Japan. Lord Mori ran a court that did little except keep his men (and himself) entertained with drinking, hawking and hunting. Affairs of state were loosely examined and paperwork generally lost, misplaced under a writing table or under a pile of something more entertaining to his Lordship. Sometimes even under the robes of a young courtesan.

Every other year the Emperor in Edo would demand all the daimyos in the land travel to his court for a year. This was a clever idea of the honorable Emperor. It kept the daimyos from each other’s throats, plundering each other’s land, and made them all accountable to Edo and the throne.

Lord Mori was fortunate in his exemption of having to travel the months to sit in attendance on the Emperor. He was awarded this exemption with pitiful letters to the court complaining of age, ill health and general infirmities. He however, continued to hunt, hawk and generally enjoy life in the hinterlands.

True, his realm, his fiefdom, was tucked away in the mountains that were a hardship to cross. To travel to Edo took months because of the bad roads, rivers and mountain passages. A daimyo was expected to assemble a large entourage for this trip: vassals, brass polishers, flag carriers, outriders, a train of horses and mules to carry all the supplies, litters for the women, litters for advisors, and then of course, his samurai. His train of honor could be four thousand men. He sent his rather stupid eldest son to comply with the Emperor’s wishes. He agreed to have this disappointing son stay in Edo and attend the Emperor at court. Probably forever.

But this tale isn’t about Lord Mori. It’s about one of his generals, his vassal, Lord Nyo and his wife, Lady Nyo, who was born from a branch of a powerful clan, though a branch who had lost standing at the court in Edo.

Now, just for the curious, Lord Nyo is an old samurai, scarred in battle, ugly as most warriors are, and at a loss when it comes to the refinement and elegance of life, especially poetry. His Lady Nyo is fully half his age, a delicate and thoughtful woman, though without issue.

But Lord and Lady Nyo don’t fill these pages alone: there are other characters, priests, magical events, Buddhist characters and a particularly tricky Tengu who will entertain any reader of this tale.

A full moon, as in many Japanese tales, figures in the mix. As do poetry, some historic and some bad. War and battles, love and hate. But this is like life. There is no getting one without the other.

The present Lady Nyo, descended from generations past.

Jane Kohut Mori Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013