Ohara Fields, North Kyoto, September 2014

A Day in the Country

Reap us! Reap us! plead the rice ears

on the golden fields of Oharu.

A man with a determined face

is showing us the ropes:

how to cut stalk with a hand sickle,

his own ink-marked with a kanji.

A short woman who could be his mum

is bundling the rice straw into sheaves,

smiling authoritatively.

      A single sentence

and you know who is in charge here

and who you won’t be introduced to.

Then you are on your own. You saw

her hands tie the sheaf in a triple knot.

You follow suit, the sun on your back,

crickets buzzing in your ears.

You and half a dozen others

are holding a long bamboo trunk

overloaded with sheaves. Women chuckle.

Someone takes a photo, quips

‘Like you’ve just caught a giant fish!’

You could stand like this for weeks

until the rice is dry!

That evening you start yawning

by dinnertime. Your whole body aches,

yet does not weigh you down.

You think in greens and browns,

recall the children playing God

to grasshoppers and small frogs.

Summertime in Kinki

Summertime in Kinki –

skin slack carcass-like,

head dislodged from spine.

Wee bugs gnaw

at our better judgement.

A yellow cat pasted

to a leather chair

like a WW2 egg

fried atop a tank.

Summertime in Kinki –

sunrays, winds, showers.

Yet it is money talks:

wind farms axed, panels

sparse, river dams on hold.

Summertime in Kinki
when the initiative balks.

from last night's gig at Urban Guild, Kyoto

Transit of Venus

The Transit of Venus

The Earth is one

as it sits to look up

into Space.

Heads tilt. A smirk a squint

unites us. We

the earth people

behind filmstrips

behind welding masks

waiting in rain

waiting in vain for a hole

in clouds.

One of us

several orbits old

saw the sun and said

the sun had a mole

on its face.

By quarter to three

most decamped

the high plateau

disheartened to see

the dark mole go.

June 6^th, 2012

  

news.nationalpost.com

Eurotrip p.3

Castelluccio

We did not go to the hills. The hills came to us.

                                Anon., XI c.

From St Benedict’s provenance

up the hairpin roads

dotted with landslide rock

and cow pies of gentle Chianina

idling inside a sharp U-turn,

then a descent as the foot taps

the brake like Morse code

onto the flat Piano Grande

leaving a trail of oil dust,

observed from the nonporous

backdrop by sheep, birds

of prey and haystacks alike,

the way a stagecoach

might have been watched over

by the Apache extras.

By the moonless window

old Benedict had a vision

of God’s inconceivable universe.

For all we know he never

set foot in Castelluccio.

Not many have. Having made

it this far, you’d take a long look

at yourself as the meltwater

rushes down the Apennines,

as the fog ascends – the karst

sinkholes being blocked –

smothering the village.

Away from the world’s

prying eyes, the stage

set for iniquity.

Teeth and Gravity

Today K. and I come to a conclusion that dental floss is an amazing invention. She made this excellent Chinese soup with veggies and scallop, the latter of which has shredded itself during the cooking process, and many of the said shreds eventually found new home between my teeth. K. asks who invented dental floss. How the heck should I know? So I google it of course.

Did you know that first dental floss goes as far back as early 19^th century? In 1815 a dentist from New Orleans recommended his patients should clean teeth with silk floss. It took some 60 years for it to be patented. We’ve come a long way from silk floss, haven’t we.

Q: Which character in Ulysses used the dental floss?

A: Not clear. It’s a toss between the editor and Myles Crawford.

“He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth.” (p. 107)

Must stop singing arias in the loo while brushing teeth. This evening my bass shook up the windows upstairs, apparently ('His voice is so deep it provided the lining for his shoes' - Matthew Caley) . Upstairs, K. couldn’t hear the TV. No big deal, with the Sex & the City banalities on. She could have sex in this city instead I told her. If only she wanted to.

Nighty-night all… and don’t forget to floss!

A wee bedtime poem for your healthy teeth.

Zero Gravity

Zero gravity. Rice floats on the way in

to a cavity. Floss won’t do. Still, a safe touchdown

with twenty seconds of fuel to spare. Armstrong

does the right thing by doing the wrong thing,

picks up a few odd rocks, off-camera.

Decades later some long-sufferer

puts two and two stones together.

The world finally gets it, for what it’s worth:

the less lucky Moon had once been Earth. 

A view of Earth from the Lunar Orbiter, 1966

Eurotrip p.2

A Naked Document

Remember Pisa? Of course you do.

I slipped into Museo dell’Opera Duomo

while you sipped your espresso

like a heedful antelope at a waterhole,

glanced once at a sanguine Tuscan

who’d chat you up to god’s eternity had he

not learned of your absent companion.

Remember that tiny photograph

I had shown you the previous night,

of a creature cast in bronze

half eagle half dog, we thought,

of an unknown breed?

Today, I learnt that the hippogriff

had been made hollow

to amuse the pre-Islamic courtiers

with its beak’s jingle-jangle

although less plausible theories place it

in some city’s water fountain. Anyway,

I am telling you all this not because

you’ll latch on to much

all curled up, foetus like,

or because griffins are more important

than your splitting headache.

I do like it though when your head nods

against my rigid, rounded chest. I like it

when your trying to pay attention

is a make-believe I am not talking

to the walls exclusively.

Correct me if I am wrong

but now I think, as I thought then

as we sauntered back to the car

past the pastel house fronts,

that going separate ways

in those couple of Pisan hours

did us both a big-time favour.

Christmas Somniloquist

A Somniloquist

Christmas Eve, near midnight.

The room has fallen silent,

swallowed up by darkness

save for my make-believe face

lit by the laptop light.

I’m half-way through an article

Chinese Taking the World by Storm

when a sudden voice fills the room:

Let’s go out and play!, it says.

I know well where it came from.

I turn round, you’re fast asleep,

your faint-pink, chopped lips

briefly parted by something

dreamt, which shaped

that plunging sound.

The next morning you tiptoe

to the window, draw

the curtains to the bitter fact:

the urban roofs intact,

circumvented by snow.

December 25^th, 2011

© Branko M.

You Are Now Leaving Iraq

http://framework.latimes.com/2011/12/17/iraq-war/#/2

http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2011/11/us-withdrawal-from-iraq-cartoon-pics.html

Saddam

Who would’ve thought that a conversation about poetry could give you an answer about weapons of mass destruction!

                                — Charles Duelfer, CIA, in National Geographic: Interrogating Saddam (2010)

Iraq, the country he ruled and ruled

as his ‘personal torture chamber’,

has scaled down to a dim prison cell –

his personal torture chamber.

Here, as a former ruler of Iraq,

here he lives on borrowed time,

is brought meals twice a day

is allowed to read books

is lent an ear to his war poetry.

But they are not interested in his poetry.

They are desperate to wring out

a couple of answers from him. Just a couple.

A simple yes or no would do.

Are there weapons under the Iraqi sand?

Is he friends with the sectarians?

He keeps shtum. He keeps reading,

keeps writing his war poetry.

The interrogator tries to win his trust.

He does. George Piro befriends him.

He even renounces a hunger strike for George’s sake.

But still he keeps shtum. And writes poetry

no one is interested in.

The weeks and months wear on.

The time is running out. Under pressure,

under immense pressure,

George Piro finally breaks down

and decides to pay attention to his poetry:

his writing style, his use of metaphor.

It is a metaphor of rifles and swords –

a figure of speech that he used

to scare off the hostile neighbour –

which brings on the truth, yet not a pardon.

It makes the world pause to think:

what if he never made that speech,

what if he didn’t have

‘a very unique way of writing’?

© Branko Manojlovic, 2011