Poetry Tuesday: "A conversation in the stype of Japanese love poems" by Robin Bonneau

A conversation in the style of Japanese love poems

I no longer walk in my garden

for the flowers there remind

me of your beauty –

and increase my sorrow.

I try to think

that it was only yesterday you left-

but the snow on the trees

and my tear-stained sleeves

do not leave room for excuses.

You have forsaken me. 

Last night I never slept.

Watching the smoke float out my window,

I wondered if it flew to yours.

Green buds color the hillsides.

I prepare tea and wait hopefully for you.

The tea grows cold.      

When snow falls on the mountain tops

I think of you.

Is your sleep also disturbed

by tender dreams, not cold?

Why do you not come?

Does snow forbid your passage,

or other love hold you prisoner?

Send word – I worry.

I gaze in my mirror.

It does not reflect my love,

only my sadness.

When I serve myself sake

I pour two cups.

Then I must drink both cups

lest someone suspect my anticipation

of your coming.

I say today, that it was

the cherry blossoms that

perfumed my sleeves last night.

But everyone knows it was you.

The reflection of the rising moon

drops like a single tear into the lake.

I understand the lake’s sadness,

that at each dawn it must

give up its luminous lover.

When you come it is like spring,

but when you leave, I shiver.

Spring breezes can bring cold reminders of winter.

The night breeze blows

my sadness away with the blossoms.

Why does the moonlight

not betray the tears on my sleeves?

Because they have dried.

You are beside me.


Ciao!
The Lonely Alchemist