‘Lord Nyo’s Continuing Lament’

Marge Chester 1947-2011

It is with a heavy heart I write of the death of Marge Chester. Marge was my best friend for many, many years.  Marge and I were born and raised in New Jersey and she was the partner of my deceased cousin, Bobby, for years. I called her “Coz” though we were not blood relations, but it didn’t matter.  Margie was a constant in my life and I am in a state of shock right now.  Margie was a long time reader and commentator on this blog, in fact in all my writing and she was a guiding light in so much of my life.  She died suddenly yesterday, and Roger, her partner for many years is also in shock.  Monday I sent her the end poem of this series, just for her, because I knew how enthusiastic she was about this tale and she was elated.  I called her and had a short talk, and then I find out this morning she has died without warning. Margie, we will miss you so much. You are so beloved.

 

Continuing this short series…. 

–

Lord Nyo galloped away-

He did not go far.

Armed with two swords,

His bow and falcon,

He halted at the edge of a grizzled field,

Autumn rain mixing with tufts of chaff

This harvested field

Forlorn, abandoned.

The scene fit his mood.

–

Sitting under an old gingko,

Only a few yellowed, fan-shaped leaves

Tiredly holding on

He pulled the bone-white fan

From his breast

And thought of poems

He vaguely remembered

From his youth.

What had seemed so right

The night before,

When he had taken his brush

To the task of reforming a life

Now in the cold rain

Under cover of gray morning,

Was more like folly–

The desperate hopes of an old fool.

–

What good was this brushed fan

When between man and wife

Was a sea filled with misery?

–

When hidden by bamboo blinds

He spied his wife quietly sitting,

Mending a gown,

Quilting a warm tunic,

While around her

Her women tittered like birds,

Laughing and playing finger games

While she,

Pale face serene,

Sat peacefully at work.

–

He remembered the early years

When entering her quarters,

He picked his way carefully across tatami

Larded with colorful lumps of sleeping women

And pillowed her in the dark

Unmindful of the snores

And nightmare-groans of her women.

–

He remembered her reading

Poems to him,

And shyly reading some of her own.

He marveled at her fertile mind.

–

She never carried a child.

He could have put her aside,

Taken another wife for heirs–

Yet he didn’t.

–

One old poem kept turning his brain.

A poem a thousand years old,

One that spoke deeply:

“This body of mine

has crossed the mountain barrier

and is here indeed!

But this heart of mine remains

drawing closer to my wife”

–

Lord Nyo reached inside his breast

And uncurled a paper

Plain, rough in texture,

And read what he had

Written,  one 

He did not burn.

Her voice sings

Like a bird beneath the leaves

Of a fall mountain.

If she’d only speak to me

What would we have to grieve?

– 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2011

Tags: 17th century Japan, dversepoets.com, fiction, Lord Nyo's Continuing Lament, poetry, Samurai, the Man'yoshu, Zen