Saturday, March 8, 2008

A Lyric Poem from Kyoto

A Post-Card from Kyoto at Rush Hour


A perverse calm even at rush hour

even from battalions of uniformed teens

fearful of awakening warlord emperors


At the Pink Bunny Cafe, a pastel blue

elephant stylized into a ball

wraps around a raspberry bear


Old women squashed

into the shape of a Z

cross the streets glazed with rain


One thousand and one gold lacquered

radiantly female images of Kannon

have manifested erect for 733 years


Another wooden temple so vast

only rope braided from women's hair

could have dragged its enormous beams


A glass geometrical monolith

vaster than Blade Runner's

imagined future contains


The panther train

eager to carry me back to Osaka

leaving maybe a moved pebble at Rengeo-in garden.




poem - J. Freed

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