7-Kyoku

Kambei

Under the hazy, blossom-laden sky,

Kambei rubs his head with a sort of blind wonder.

The quiet of the lake. Too tired to laugh.

The outline of a white fox,

the oldest game there is.

Eyes on the spring hills at the end of the street,

Kambei rubs his head once more.

Kyūzō

Kyūzō, buried to his waist in flowers,

mirrored in the autumn lake

by Asuka’s Thundergate,

two strands of hair loose on his face.

Rags and ribbons flutter in the wind.

The moon shines over the hill field,

practically reduced to ashes.

Heihachi

Looking through the sawdust

he drops his pipe and tobacco case

in sudden amazement,

pulls a straw rain cape about his head.

A cunning latice of very light steel:

the running stream where Heihachi will meet

imagined voices in the water sounds.

Shichirōji

All at once the smell of sulphur,

the stink of corpses through dust storms

like the bulbs of iron plants.

Shichirōji's keen senses will ensure his survival.

He struggles out of the pond with

the stump of a snapped harpoon,

the tholepin or an oarlock.

Gorōbei

The saddest thing of all

is the scarecrow, a lonely bird,

snow blowing in through broken windows.

In the first sunlight: three children

who circle their terrible father,

the moon is his arms a modest lamp.

Oh Gorōbei, Gorōbei, Gorōbei, Gorōbei.

Katsushirō

After Shino and Katsushirō make love,

war clouds no longer hover in broken snatches.

The soft folds of her lavender sleeve

are damped down at daybreak.

Blameless as the flowers of spring,

they give way to a final tilt,

sending sharp sparks into the air.

Kikuchiyo

Wet with dawn’s dew, a lean black dog

falls in love with a high-ranked courtesan.

Kikuchiyo pretends disinterest.

Apron dangling from his thin neck,

he infiltrates the evil Iruka’s palace

in a cloud of flour and fury,

ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides.

Commentary:

This poem (or set of seven poems, if you prefer) is from School of Forgery, and as is typical of poems from that book, it is heavily indebted to source texts. In this case, these are portraits (or ‘lyric golems’) of the principle characters from Akira Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai, collaged from the contents of seven separate books: Seven Samurai by Joan Mellen (a study of the film); Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Jay Rubin; Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut; Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx with Rowland Barber; The Annotated Thursday, a version of The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, annotated by Martin Gardner; The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, translated by Geoffrey Brownas and Anthony Thwaite; and Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage 1780-1830 by C. Andrew Gerstle.

‘Kyoku’ means something akin to ‘song’.

 

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