Two Poems in Honor of Japan

It is hard to believe it is already a year since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  I composed and posted these last year right after this national disaster, and a year later I post these in memory of the Japanese people who died and for a nation who are still recovering. 

Banji wa yume.

Lady Nyo

 

Two Poems in Honor of Japan, 2011

 

Is there a moon viewing party

In Japan tonight?

Destruction, sorrow

Covers the land,

Despair, loss

Regulates the heart.

Perhaps the moon presence

Is of little interest

And less comfort.

Perhaps sorrow goes too deep

To raise eyes above the graves.

Yet,

Her gleam falls upon all

A compassionate blanketing

Of the Earth,

Softening the soiled,

Ravaged landscape,

A beacon of promise

Of the return to life,

And beauty to nature.

 

—————————————————————–

 

Two weeks and the cherry blossoms

Would have opened in Sendai.

Beautiful clouds of scented prayers

Falling upon upturned faces,

The eternal promise of hope for the earth,

Swept out to sea

With a good part of humanity.

 

I will sit beneath the moon tonight

Listening to frogs sing,

An owl in the woods

The birds settling in the dark—

 

My cherry tree is blooming

A small cloud of satin blossom.

I will count falling petals,

And offer these up as prayers.

Banji wa yume.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2011, 2012

 

Tags: destruction, earthquake, in memory, Japan, Lady Nyo, one year since earthquake, poetry, recovery, renewal, Sorrow, the Japanese People, Tsumani, two poems in honor of Japan