Kyoto is fortunate,
fortunate and full of palaces,
winged roofs,
stairs like musical scales.
Aged but flirtatious,
stony but alive,
wooden,
but growing from sky to earth,
Kyoto is a city
whose beauty moves you to tears.
I mean the real tears
of a certain gentleman,
a connoisseur, lover of antiquities,
who at a key moment,
from behind a green table,
exclaimed that after all
there are so many inferior cities
and burst out sobbing
in his seat.
That’s how Kyoto, far lovelier
than Hiroshima, was saved.
But this is ancient history.
I can’t dwell on it forever
or keep asking endlessly,
what’s next, what’s next.
Day to day I trust in permanence,
in history’s prospects.
I can’t gnaw apples
in a constant state of terror.
Now and then I hear about some Prometheus
wearing his fire helmet,
enjoying his grandkids.
While writing these lines
I wonder
what in them will come to sound
ridiculous and when.
Fear strikes me
only at times.
On the road.
In a strange city.
With garden-variety brick walls,
a tower, old and ordinary,
stucco peeling under slapdash moldings,
cracker-box housing projects,
nothing,
a helpless little tree.
What would he do here,
that tenderhearted gentleman,
the connoisseur, lover of antiquities.
Plaster god, have mercy on him.
Heave a sigh, oh classic,
from the depths of your mass-produced bust.
Only now and then,
in a city, one of many.
In a hotel room
overlooking the gutter
with a cat howling like a baby
under the stars.
In a city with lots of people,
many more than you’ll find painted
on jugs, cups, saucers, and silk screens.
In a city about which I know
this one thing:
it’s not Kyoto,
not Kyoto for sure.