Cinquains
Reading edition
CITY CHILD’S EASTER
FRAGRANCE Of Hot Cross Buns: Pots of white lilies: sunshine: magic eggs: New skipping-ropes—but old old winds Of Faith.
DEEP SNOW
POWDER Of diamond Upon a silver birch; Old stone wall Buried deep. And you ... A scarlet bird Whose wild wings flutter here Against my soul. How still The world!
HOKKU
*“‘Hokku’ (seventeen-syllable poem) in Japanese mind might be compared with a tiny star, I dare say, carrying the whole sky at its back. It is like a slightly-open door, where you may steal into the realm of poesy. It is simply a guiding lamp. Its value depends on how much it suggests.”
(Yone Noguchi, from The Pilgrimage, published by Elkin Mathews, London, Eng.)
TWELVE HOKKU ON A CANADIAN THEME
(1)
HOW strangely they float, Pale gold and ivory cups, On wilderness lakes. (2) The loon’s weird laughter Holds Indian deviltry, Long, long forgotten. (3) Indian cradle Swung from bough, rocked by Four Winds: Christ lay in manger. (4) Silver-haired Marquise! You were transplanted, one Spring, Into wild New France. (5) The sugar maples ... Benevolent goddesses Who offer honey. (6) Snow-shoes: like strong wings Bound on the feet of victors Conquering snow-fields. (7) On city pavements Two muffled, sombre nuns pace, Behind laughing girls. (8) You set narcissus Amidst your silver birches By Northern lakeside. (9) Five o’clock! You pause ... Handle frail, old cups, pour tea, And become grande dame. (10) When Loneliness stalked ... Black panther through gold wheat-fields ... You used Love’s arrows. (11) Puissant woman!... Sheltering tiny things like English primroses! (12) Fast the new trails lead From wilderness to city! Years pass ... Canada!
LIFE SEQUENCE
(In The Hokku Manner)
(UNREADY) Close-folded fern ... So stiff; so coldly self-sustained: But summer passes. (Motherhood) Puss watches the world, Troubled: but knows she is linked To a miracle. (Home) Empty room; fire dies; Moon shines in; chairs and tables converse; Books croon songs. (Awakening) Gray old tree Has breasted winter storms; but is vaguely Worried by March. (Memorial Tablet) Sunshine on storied bronze: Love on the whirling earth: And you on my heart.
PRAYER IN SCARLET AND WHITE PAINT
THERE is a marvellous washing creamy and snowy-white hung high on lines stretched from upper and lower balconies in the back-yard, across the narrow lane behind my rusty apple-tree and dusty lilac hedge; and a great splendid ‘woman-by-the-day’ comely and fat, with a bronzed skin and tumbled blue black hair, and an ugly and joyous scarlet gown, is hanging out the clothes ... wet heavy clean white clothes ... soft liquid splashes of light amidst dull dusty trees and sombre dirty bricks. The laden lines begin to ripple seductively in the cool sour east wind. There is no sun to-day, but the great splashes of high-hung white, the competent brown arms, the comfortable strength in vivid scarlet ... they have given me the warmth and wonder and the refreshment of tumbling woodland waters and blazing sun. I thank you ... Life! I daub it in on a bit of canvas (with a copy of a Botticelli madonna on the other side!) so I may remember ...... the sordid back lane has become quite immaterial ... I thank you ... Life!