Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Sydney Giffard

print this page

Lake Chuzenji: News of a Friend

i.m. Jason Roussos

We sit above the lake in early spring:
pallid reflections, the pluperfect past,
the yellow motorboat, the hornets’ nest,
undifferentiated. Time is absent, nothing
before or after. Nothing suffices us.
The post has come.
News of a friend: that he has cancer.

In this lake’s black refrigerated depths
bodies are said to lurk, undecomposed
like poems in deserted libraries.
The drifting cries of fishermen and crows
litter the afternoon.

There is time, even for our friend;
six months. The condition is incurable.

So there is time; shadows were sent
to tell the time, black-hooded
familiars of the Tokyo stage,
scene-shifters, property men, manipulators,
also assassins.

All is forgiven to the silent audience
and puzzled critics, his dignity seems to insist.

Sitting above the lake, even in early spring,
we find nothing to contradict this deadening:
rotting tree-trunks lie hidden in the green ferns,
some insect-borne disease attacks the pines,
and there are still visions of warriors in the grasses.

 

Page(s) 65

Back to top