Never to Return

Photograph by Don Paulson


PROSE POEM: NEVER TO RETURN

Kyoto

World’s end, the sunlight that fell down
to earth was warm, a warm wind blowing
through the flowers.

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.

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.

Not that I was bored. The taste of honey
in the air, nothing substantial but enough
to eat & live from.

I was smoking cigarettes, but only to enjoy
their fragrance. And weirdly I could only smoke
them out of doors.

For now my worldly goods consisted of a single towel.
I didn’t own a pillow, much less a futon mattress.
True I still had a tooth brush, but the only book
I owned had nothing but blank pages. Still I
enjoyed the heft of it when I would hold it
in my hands from time to time.

Women were lovely objects but not once
did I try to go with one. It was enough
to dream about them.

Something unspeakable would urge me on,
& then my heart, although my life was purposeless,
started pounding with a kind of hope.

*
*

In the woods was a very strange park, where
women, children & men would stroll by smiling
wildly. They spoke a language I didn’t understand
& showed emotions I couldn’t unravel.

Looking up at the sky, I saw
a spider web, silver & shining.


Nakahara Chuya

Posted over on Poems & Poetics