jotted this down after stumbling across shinjuku goen yesterday following some holiday gift shopping. i can’t belive it’s taken me this long to discover what is probably the most beautiful park in the city. all the flat ground a man needs to roll bocce, beautiful winding paths, coy ponds and ancient trees dazzling in their fall colours. one old man of the forest in particular struck me with much awe and i sat for quite some time in a wooden pergola overlooking the japanese maple on a hill above a large coy pond. the juxtaposition of the bustling city shopping block and the meditative repose of the park shocked me out of the consumer stupor i had been in all morning and afternoon.
blood red maple
blood red maple
raging fire in my veins
burst forth from a wooden nervous system
burst forth from roots as old as
time
in the autumn of your life
warmed by the heat of a thousand suns
wise old man who has lived through so much
who has seen so much
emperors are born and die
under the shade of your wooden arms
battles are fought and empires crumble
in the impenetrable shadow of your mighty stalk
history is etched in your very skin
and your blood is the blood of a nation
proud and mysterious
it is the blood of the shogun
the samurai
it is so much the blood of the peasant
blood red maple
in this the autumn of our life
which was predicted in the first shoot of your might brow
and now smolders
in the raging fire of your bloody cannopy
you who have heard so much
the confession of murderers
the cooing of lovers
a mother’s tears as they fall in pond of coy
blood red maple
if you could speak on the eve
of our great demise
what would you say to a deaf man