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<\/p>\nBy Andy Barritt.<\/p>\n
\u00e4\u00b8\u20ac<\/p>\n
On Fridays I call at the young widow’s house
\nto wallow in a wooden tub and listen to her singing
\nas she mends the kimonos of the Ky\u00c5\u008dto party set.
\nNeighbours gossip but we unstitch their secrets.
\nTonight she serves cold persimmon juice.
\nSomething I’ve not had before.
\nThat bitter sweet taste.<\/p>\n
\u00e4\u00ba\u0152<\/p>\n
In the restaurant the lights are too bright,
\nas they always are in this country.
\nBlame it on the shape of Western eyes
\nmy host argues quite seriously.
\nNao-san is stuck in a booth across the aisle
\nwith her nephew, two nieces,
\ntwisting to hear my replies to her brother
\nwho never once glances her way.<\/p>\n
\u00e4\u00b8\u2030<\/p>\n
Inevitable karaoke.
\nElvis dragged from his grave,
\nthe brother tearful at old folk songs,
\nme murdering \u2018Danny Boy’
\nbetween slugs of J&B.<\/p>\n
\u00e5\u203a\u203a<\/p>\n
We touch, only in exhaustion.
\nUnder the sky’s blue flame everything is flesh,
\nexcept her heels
\ndead-headed on the floor<\/p>\n
\u00e4\u00ba\u201d<\/p>\n
Paper lightning dances above our heads
\nas the snow lays a white sheet over the face
\nof the kami’s mirror hall.
\nClap for the attention of this harvest god,
\nwho I cannot picture, except as black smoke
\npressing itself coldly upon the earth. <\/p>\n
\u00e5\u2026\u00ad<\/p>\n
Fukuoka: your brother laughed off my guidebook
\nwith its lurid spread of tattooed flesh,
\nbut when I shot a Nakasu alley
\nyou hissed Yakuza!
\nrecoiling from the negative burn
\nof a sharked-out Lincoln cruising the red light.<\/p>\n
\u00e4\u00b8\u0192<\/p>\n
The grave stands under gingko giants and thunder clouds.
\nWe leave a vase of blue irises,
\noffer the same incense you use to fragrance your kimono.
\n\u201cAt the funeral, a stream of white smoke
\nflowed into the open shrine.”
\nShadows of sunset: on dark limbs the temples stretch out
\ntoward paradise.<\/p>\n
\u00e3\u20ac\u2021<\/p>\n
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