WAYNE POUNDS

WAYNE POUNDS

En No Gyoja 役行者 /  聖天島 /

Shōtenjima / Holy Hermit’s Isle

En no Gyoja’s isle’s the heart of Tokyo’s Ueno Park

It’s not in the guidebooks the tourists beguile

The stillest place, it’s open only on snake days

to understand which will require you to study

the Chinese zodiac and Taoism, goddamn your eyes

En’s walking’s ended now,

His features eroding,

He stares across the water.

Ducks on the pond--

Life goes on

Chiisa no, heibon na shiawase de ii

A small, ordinary happiness is enough

------

2

Yang Hsui was a dab hand

at solving riddles

He solved one around the year. 200

for Ts’ao Ts’ao

When the characters for shao (young)

and nu (woman) are combined

the result is miao, meaning mystery

Later a multi-volume work on gynecology

Ancient & modern Acupuncture

& Moxibustion Methods was compiled by

the polynomial Qin Fu Zhen Jiu Miao

-------

3

I wedded once Cold Mountain says

sought titles sweet and triumphs

had houses lands prestige

knew the way of a man with a woman

And gave these up for a hermitage? No--

I dream of arms like the famished dream of food

stir your cream in my coffee sweet doll

I’ll be your sugar daddy

if you’ll be my jelly roll

Sixteen is the age they sing about

but I once sent a poem to a woman aged fifty-three

told her I wanted to be the parakeet

picking flowers in her cherry tree

She chopped me down like an old fig tree

cute, she sd, to be so antique

and went waltzing on her way

serving the miao of mystery

WAYNE POUNDS

WAYNE POUNDS: Born Oklahoma 1946, U.S. Army (Vietnam) 1968-170, Ph. D. at the University of Kansas 1976. Taught in Japan the last thirty years, now retired. Six self-published volumes of poetry.