Two Poems:

Hiroshige

1.

Here is a view of the cloth-dyers' stalls in Konda Street
with Fuji-san white in the distance and a sky
alive with small birds, wrens and larks,
flags and streamers and paper carp rustling in the wind
above the city, prosperous, blossoming, early spring.

Here is a view of the timber yards in the Fukugawa district,
two men poling lashed rafts of logs against the shore,
rooftops cloaked in snow, trees illuminated with it,
small dogs, an umbrella, two sparrows
and snowflakes above the deep blue Sumida River.

Here is a view of the Ryogoku Bridge, crowds sheltering
in tea houses from a summer storm, wide water
full of ferries, work vessels delivering rice, silhouette
of a courtesan against the drawn blinds of a pleasure boat
amid mimosa blossoms, early evening, plum rain.

Three views of the city: that is enough for one day.

2.

Soji, the block-cutter, makes merry with the woodsmen
who bring the choicest logs from the mountains,
pouring hot sake in his workshop against an autumn chill
with rustic fellows for whom Edo, in its complexity,
must resemble a bouquet of thorns and chrysanthemums.

In this way, filial, plied with rice wine, lovers
of the same forest goddess,
the finest wood is obtained at small cost.

Yamakazura, wood of the wild cherry tree.

Only heartwood will suffice for the master line block,
softer wood for the color blocks, cut from the same tree,
patiently, so they will shrink at the same rate.

Paper makers, printers, ink-pigment grinders,
forgers of awls and fine chisels,
my brush is my own to paint with as I will
but the art of reproduction relies upon many craftsmen.

Why fear technology? Why fear the west?

The Americans in their black ships bring
marvels of ingenuity but nothing I cannot imagine
my own hands creating in time.

At first, it is true, their photographs possessed
the magical articulation of a talking bird,
but already I have gleaned their insights,

placing the gnarled limb of the Sleeping Dragon Plum Tree
hard in the foreground, branches growing beyond
the horizon of a frame neither rigid nor sacrosanct.

Reflections on water, the sun behind a cloud,
their light effects appear contrived, lacking in subtlety,
yet a bright moon does cast shadows,
and this may be illustrative of winter nights,
streets of the Yoshiwara thronged with revelers.

Why fear a shadow? Why fear the frame?

A frame is not art but a convention of art's limitations.
Frames remind pictures of their mortality
as moon shadows prove that I am human and corrupt.

3.

Waking from a dream: the city is burning
and I am the fire warden.
It is my inheritance, my jurisdiction and duty.

Still I can do nothing but stare from my watchtower
as the cloth-dyers' banners flare into fiery ribbons
and the lumberyards curl with orange flame.

In the morning I am taken by the Shogun's magistrates
and led through the streets in disgrace.

The fire began here, they say, coming to a place
I recognize as the workshop of the carver, Soji.
It is full of cherry-wood blocks, master templates
of all my prints, thousands upon thousands.

These, they say, were the first to burn.

Eclogue

1.

When Hiroshige turns the frame vertical
throughout One Hundred Views of Edo,
his last great sequence of wood-block prints,
it is perhaps a nod toward photography —
he had seen some early examples,
tip of the western technological dagger —
though it also suggests a window, and so
makes the viewer complicit. And then
he deepens that dialogue by obscuring
or complicating the depicted landscape
with unusual angles of perspective
and wry compositional permutations:
there is a cinematic sense of depth
and motion to the images, varied as they are,
and the frame enters into the composition
as the delineating horizon of a door,
a pleasure boat, a temple or palanquin,
with, sometimes, an implied observer
having just left the scene — an ink brush
set down hastily, a robe on the floor,
a single hairpin removed from the package
in the courtesan's chamber. Sometimes
that observer is present at the margins
as an elbow or a shadow, as a horse,
a white cat, a cuckoo. In my favorite
a turtle, bound and trussed and hung
from a cord, cranes its neck to look out
from the Mannen bridge across meadows
and salt marshes full of fishermen
and white-sailed boats toward the distant city
and Mount Fuji on the far horizon.
I had assumed, studying it, that this turtle
had been trapped for sale as a food item —
the Japanese must like turtle soup? —
but have since discovered something
entirely marvelous: captive turtles
were sold to travelers not to be eaten,
but to be released back into the marsh,
as karmic offerings . . .

2.

Taken away from Hiroshige by the doorbell:
a guy wanting to cut down my coconuts
and cart them away for the local coco frío trade.
Throughout Miami, wherever the locals live,
you can buy a cold coconut to drink straight
from the shell for a buck or two: coco frío.
This man has a withered left hand — the dexterity
of cutting and catching the coconuts as they fall
already impressive, how much more so with his
disability. In Miami Spanglish he calls me boss,
and I say, Hay un otra árbol mas grande atrás,
my Spanish even worse than his poor English,
showing him the giant tree laden with dozens
of fat coconuts in the backyard, and he says
¡cocos tremendos!, vowing to return tomorrow
with a bigger ladder. I wonder if he will.
The same guys do not always return, season
after season, despite my eager donations.
Only the newest arrivals work this job,
fresh from Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Honduras,
and with luck a year is enough to climb a rung
upon that larger, metaphorical ladder.
These interactions with the coco frío guys
are always a highlight of my year. Why?
I suppose the sociological aspect is part of it,
grass-roots American dreaming — but also
I have planted these coconut palms myself,
planted them as fish-tailed shoots just sprouted
from the husk and now they are enormous trees
cascading coconuts across the yard,
so sending forth this crop, however humble,
is as close as I will ever come to farming.
This is my pastoral. If I were Horace,
this would be an ode. I mean Neruda. I mean,
if I were Virgil this would be an eclogue.

Campbell McGrath
Michigan Quarterly Review
Volume XLV, No. 2
Spring 2006

Copyright © The University of Michigan, 2006.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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