Now, this is the cup the White Men drink When they go to right a wrong, And that is the cup of the old world’s hate– Cruel and strained and strong. We have drunk that cup–and a bi…
Source: Poetry Interlude: A Song of the White Men, by Rudyard Kipling
You will rest under the vines of
the high stone walls of the castle that
no one deemed necessary to erect a concrete
facsimile of what was destroyed by the conflagrations of war
perhaps reflecting on the fitting words of Norinaga to the sound of cicadas
Having had your fill of a view of streets and houses laid out below
a cobweb of power lines cast over houses much the same
since samurai gathered taxes door to door with swords hung
unused by their sides, topknotted bureaucrats,
in the mode of salarimen today, you will
make your way down to the city
There the tender beef calmed with beer and soy will
sit on a plate before you and you’ll
hear Hibari Misora sing and
you’ll close your eyes
and sigh
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and…
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