Poems: The Untangled Vine Becomes

11 Homophonic Translations from the Japanese by Tony Leuzzi 1 Before the dreaded taking leave you wrapped in a white sheet dim the lights     The room becomes a cave of recollection     a woman's laughter     falling water 2 It is difficult to say the man who in the moon's pale glow approached with slow and careful steps is he who as dawn crowned the evergreens in gold darted from my bed 3 In this irrational season we knell for no one If rage unfurls a road too narrow for our feet each step we fail to take will leave us tolling for the birds and rocks 4                    Walking east I call to mind              another time when done                    with walking east I turned the other way and walked alone because it was the other way 5 Watching mist rise from distant hills I am reminded of a time when after stealing through the woods I hurried home and saw a strange man leaning on our gate laughing with my mother 6 we are as are you now know how you know the untangled vine becomes 7 When Eve was run from Eden she came upon and then pursued a deer which in its coyness lured her further and further into a forest of tombs 8 A man rapped at my gate for bread I handed him an urn of ash which he would later knead to bake a loaf of darkened bone 9 The bow bends the rake gathers The first born has been left to die beneath a sky so blue the birds there soar then sink like small black ships 10 There are no secrets in this river A minnow brushes by my knees On another shore a man has finished the last of his wine and whispered from the bottle before he sent it floating on the water 11 I am not the mirror's me but you knew that having made a he of me when I reach to touch his face you're already there ~ Tony Leuzzi, summer '09