TRAVEL POEM
Ozu
Ricky Ian Gordon, Poet Laureate of WONDERLUST — and we didn’t even realize we had one until it sort of snuck up on us — has written many gorgeous poems for us. Here are just a few: “Keys”, “Antonioni”, and “The Sand Hill Cranes”
His day job, if geniuses really have “day jobs”, other than being geniuses, is writing award-winning operas and musical theater that premiere at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. The New York Times compared his music to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, and called it “caviar for a world gorging on pizza!” Ouch, to everyone else.
He’s also just published his memoir — 19,421 pages — no, I’m kidding, but it’s long, and brilliant. It’s called Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera. (Who knew opera was so exciting?) https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Through-Chronicle-Drugs-Opera/dp/0374605726
This poem takes us to Tokyo…
Ozu
Establishing shot-
An alleyway…neon lights…
A bar in Tokyo…
Music, like canned worms.
In a drab suit,
A drunken father
Eating sea urchin,
Drinks sake,
Plotting his daughter’s future.
She is at home
Sitting seiza
On a tatami mat.
He will end up alone.
She will end up unhappy.
A train depot…
It is morning.
The starched white shirts
Of businessmen
On their way to work
Ripple like sails
In the breeze
Against a gray sky.
It is spring,
Late spring.
In early spring,
A husband
Commits adultery
With “Goldfish,”
A younger woman
Birds sing
In a cage
In early summer
Where a grandfather
Prepares their food.
A little boy lies
About washing his face.
“Check the washcloth,”
He says,
“It’s wet,”
A daughter decides
Who she will marry
Against her families wishes.
The barley ripens
On an autumn afternoon
A widower
With three children
Will end up alone.
“Alone, eh?”
He says,
At the end,
But he is alone,
Just like the father
In late spring
Slumping
Before he is done
Pealing an apple.
In late autumn,
In brilliant color
A mother, a widow,
To avert her daughter’s
Inevitable spinsterhood,
Pushes her away.
The daughter sobs;
Hands hiding her face,
Like all the daughters
And all the sons
That know
How sad life is,
Then the mother
Is alone
Like the father
In late spring,
Or the wife
In early spring,
Or the father
On an autumn afternoon,
Or the parents in early summer.
Currents shift.
Cities boom.
In winter,
There is snow
On Mount Fuji.
It is elegantly composed.
It is achingly tender.
It is life.
The grass blows.
Clouds drift.
Water ripples.
A train passes.
A dog scratches it’s ear.
One golden leaf
Floats to the ground.
They drink Tea
Sitting seiza
On a tatami mat.
When they leave it,
The room is empty,
Though full
with their absence.
