Lord Nyo’s Lament, from “Song of the Nightingale” just published.

http://amzn.to/1Cm8mZi

–

Lord Nyo’s Lament

 

Oh my wife!

My feet take me over mountains

In the service to our lord

But my heart stays tucked in the bosom

Of your robe.

–

The song of the arrow

As it arced into the sea

Was as tuneless

As a badly strung samisen.

–

Gun- metal clouds

Stretched across a dull horizon

The sun still asleep

As he should be

His quiver empty

His heart, too.

–

When had the callousness of life and death

Become as comfortable as breath to him?

He had become too much the warrior

And too little the man

-.

His distance from his wife,

From most of life

Was as if some unseen object

Kept them ten paces apart.

Perhaps it was the cloud-barrier

Of earthly lusts which obscured

The Sun of Buddha?

–

Perhaps he should pray.

What God would listen?

Then it came to him

That joker of a Buddha, Fudo

With his rope to pull him from Hell

And his sword to cut through foolishness-

Fudo would listen.

–

Fudo knew the quaking hearts

The illusions embraced

To stomach the battlefield

The fog of drink,

To face life

In the service of Death.

Fudo would save him from

The yellow waters of Hell.

–

He remembered those years

When she could bring him to his knees

With the promise of dark mystery

Between silken thighs,

And the glimpse of her white wrist-

A river of passion

Just beneath the surface.

How he had steeled his heart

Believing himself unmanned

For the love she induced!

–

Three cranes flew low to the shore,

Legs streaming like black ribbons behind.

Three cranes, three prayers, three chances

To find his way back

Bound up in Fudo’s ropes,

Prodded in the ass by Fudo’s sword.

–

He would write a poem

On a bone-white fan

To leave on her cushion.

She would know his love

She would know his sorrow.

–

The sea took his arrows

Beyond the breakers,

The glint of sleek feathers

Catching thin rays of light.

–

An unexpected peace came over him

As they journeyed far from his hands.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2011, 2015

Tags: "Song of the Nightingale", 17th century Japan, Jane Kohut-Bartels, Japan, Lord Nyo's Lament, Samurai