Goro Takano-l
A Wake Song
When her husband’s wake is about to end before dawn
A woman tells everybody else to leave her alone
With the embalmed corpse and shuts the door, quietly
She slowly undresses the dead
And stares at its withering penis
Put near the husband’s head in the wooden coffin
Is a washed-out photo of two gigantic rocks
Sticking out of Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, taken
During their honeymoon days in the remote past
As if to reflect herself in a kaleidoscopic labyrinth
She starts to sing a nameless lullaby
Two rocks kissing Smoke and ashes don’t suit you
On the twilight bay A bit too early to go earthbound
When your heart was like a dud Rose of all roses, when will you
Or like incense smoke Break in flower one more time?
Two rocks kissing In your face I say our human language
Under blue moonlight Is a result of sexual selection, almost like
When a war crawled out This seductive dysfunction; now I nudge
And another crawled in A gyre widening from this rocking cradle
Two rocks kissing Evil as it looks, it is the calmest
Near a dragon’s tranquil sleep Helpless as it is, it is fierce and sly
When you wondered if Honey of generation, how can I resist
The peace you’d chanted might be evil Abiding by this last curfew?
Two rocks kissing World is watching my aching heart
In the winter rain Conceiving a changeless work of art
By a floating house By calling to what I have handled least,
For the floating world My own opposite, simply like this jest
When the woman cuts off the penis with a knife
The spreading waters turn rose-red in her sight
She will take to the grave this secret booty
And keep repeating her quiet honeymoon
Even after the cremation
(Note: This poem was inspired by Taeko Kono’s short story and W. B. Yeats’ poems)
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