![]() ![]() The taste of honey in the air, nothing substantial but enough to eat & live from. No one around who lived there, not a soul, no children playing there, & I with no one near or dear to me, no obligation but to watch the color of the sky above a weathervane. On a wooden bridge, the dust that morning silent, a mailbox red & shining all day long, a solitary baby carriage on the street, a lonely pinwheel. World’s end, the sunlight that fell down to earth was warm, a warm wind blowing through the flowers. Straight into my eyes, like he was getting mad, Then you know what? He kept on staring at me, Yesterday, I flipped a stone over that weighed Swore that the clogs that he was wearing weren’t his.” And that was just a while ago.Ī while ago. He would laugh and tell you that the stars became him He used to think of little things that didn’t matter.” Would cut his speech up into little pieces. His eyes like water in a pond the color when it clears, His smile that didn’t look like someone living. The weird smile that he wore, shiney like brass, He walked away, he walked out from that door, I find that the last stanza is my favourite, as it brings the poem full-circle to the daylight again, which though meagre in its heat is still much better than the dry chill of night.Translations from Japanese by Jerome Rothenberg & Yasuhiro Yotsumoto (It’s worth noting that our houses are not really built for cold, so when it’s cold outside it’s cold inside too.)Ĩ. ![]() I need a “tight” verb, something to emphasise that this is no casual draping of a shawl, but a really pervasive cold. It is intransitive, isn’t it? I meant it to emphasise how the freezing night makes everything grasp for warmth, so while I intended “they” to refer to the people, it could continue the personification of the blankets and the candles too. They were meant more to be as criminals in anarchy – not breaking wind!! Oh that made me laugh. Yes this rhyme was troublesome, and I will likely be mulling that one over. The ellipsis is to slow it down and change direction.ĥ. Maybe □ I prefer the omission though, as it turns the sky from a plain old noun into an oppressive force, akin to “light”.Ĥ. The parenthesis are an exposition of the first point really, to make sense of the apparent contradiction – truly there’s no escaping the brightness of Autumn days, no concealment when all the trees are shrivelling.ģ. It is likely very different in the Northern hemisphere and in wetter climates, but this is truly what it’s like in Johannesburg (6 months ago), particularly after the rainy season (Summer) did not deliver much rain at all.Ģ. Further to this, the direct light is almost too washed out, and it’s in the shaded places that full detail can be seen best. This is an intentional description, which is echoed later in the poem, to show how the Autumn sky here lights everything – the dry twigs and leaves have no hope of blocking its pervasive light. Thanks for your numbered feedback – it will make my reply quite orderly too!ġ. It is an interesting, intriguing poem, with a strong sense of meter and ambitious imagery. I assume that “they” in line 16 refers back to “people.” However, my first inclination was to think it refers back to “blankets” or “shoulders.” 8. Perhaps: “Blankets cradle shoulders…” or “Blankets hug our shoulders…” 7. I think of “huddle” as an intransitive verb, and you are using it as a transitive verb. ![]() Plus, I cannot read “winds break in” without thinking about “breaking wind.” 6. Since you have a perfect rhyme in every other stanza, I would find one for the third stanza as well. I don’t understand the need for the ellipsis in line 11. In line 8, I don’t care for the omission of “an” between “from” and “all.” You could fix it by changing lines 7-8 to something like:Ĥ. Do you need the parentheses at the beginning and end of the second stanza? I’m not sure what they add. In the first stanza, how is it that “shadows” are “bright”? I think of shadows as dark. ![]()
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