Page 5 - Contrast1979v22n2
P. 5

-Spring Snow                                                                 Beth Lengyel

          for Ykio Mishima                        Dreaming of your own coffin
                                                              pearls on leopard skin
 Already it is getting late
 as pale light falls                              you had the courage of words
 beyond Kiyoaki and Satoko                                    the movement of action
 playing sugoroku
                                                  And is not the Emperor really a god?
 fragile as summer insects                        Answering the crumbling world
 youth is their real beauty                       you paid a last homage to St. Sebastian

 The pond is no longer smooth                                 the vicious splendour of seppuki
 it shows the lines of ages Mishima
 it shows the brittle autumn approaching          Later you look back at the bending wind
                                                  dusting the plain of Yamatio with snow flakes
             flakes of snow dancing               your footprints disappearing in the spring snow
            in the wind
            on the plain of Yamatio              Sugoroku-Japanese game similar to backgammon
                                                 Seppuki-Japanese ritual suicide
            AndSatoko                           Yukio Mishima-J apanese writer who committed ritual
 is she wearing French perfume again?
 Do the wrinkles of her turning dress                                  suicide in the early 1960' s.

            define the coming years?                            Ian Durant

 At the court of Kyoto                    3
a waterfall of colour bursts
with bustling figures in a crowd

            cherry blossom in bloom
            always suggests simile
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