You don`t walk on your feet, you walk on your stomach!
Food so fresh it`s still wriggling. Kill it! Burn it! Eat it!
Great Hairy Northern Barbarian prefer well dead and
well cooked! Sink teeth into Japanese schoolgirl butt!
Nyugg!

Like a fish out of water, I gape at a flood of Japanese;
hauled over to translate, guy at next table says: "broiled
salmon testes!" I flip over and die

"Hai, hai, e-ee, eh ... sumimasen", says the woman on TV
(`sumimasen` means `excuse me`)

Wanna go to Naruko-onsen. "Shikansen?" asks unhelpful
tourist woman. "Iie", I say. "Ah," she says, "change Kogota!"
Cheap local train good enough for poet!
(onsen = hot spring/spa; shikansen = bullet train; `iie= no)

One week craving muesli;
and my wife changing into her swimming costume

No need to get anywhere, no hurry.
Sun at Hiraizumi Station

Matsuo Basho didn`t like Zuiganji, the Zen Temple at Matsushima Bay;
Ralph Hoyte did.
Ralph Hoyte didn`t like Konjikido, the Golden Hall of Hiraizumi;
Matsuo Basho did.
You call this presumptious of me? Go swing a cat!

Even in Japan, things still have to mean something
Oh Kanrantei, ripples on water!

Dozing at Kogota Station
a dragonfly alights on my knee

at shitomae-no-seki (The Shitomae Barrier, Naruko-onsen):
A dragonfly alights on my notebook,
carefully placed in the statue of Basho`s hand.
It takes off again, carrying my words to the Land
of the Dead. The old master stirs, smiles ... nods
(in Japan, dragonflies carry messages to the dead)

composed in Naruko-kyo: Naruko Gorge:
`Natural`? Don`t tell me a Zen Garden is `natural`!
It`s as precision manufactured as Mitsubishi steel. If you
want `natural`, see under `m` for `malaria`!

train to Shinjo, mist lifting off valley:
Basho was treated suspiciously here; there
is a theory that he was a spy for the Shogunate.
Freely passing Shitomae-no-seki, must lifts off the valley

konjikido: golden hall of hiraizumi:
Jewelled doors battered by winds; gold
pillars cracked by cold; all will go to grass
where grasshoppers sing, oh Konjikido

I haven`t explained any other poems, lets explain this one. The Japanese ALLUDE to things in poems. You have to unpack the poem, knowing the allusions. They do not state directly. So, in Basho`s poems, for example, each line refers to an older poetic authority, an older poetry master, Chinese or Japanese. More, each word has countless resonances, often each syllable. Bacause Japanese is such a syllabic, sibillant language countless puns can be going on at the same time. In Heian Japan, when the art of poetry was most highly developed, poems were instruments of seduction, for men and women. You were judged by the ability to REFER to ancient lines, ancient poetic themes, in a way which showed them to best advantage - a courtly art, indeed. So in the above I refer to two of Basho`s poems (whoops, left the book in hotel, will have to quote them tomorrow, but still:), but whereas he turned the first towards the Golden Hall, Konjikido, as a symbol of things abiding, I have combined it with the image in the second (of grasshoppers singing in empty, long-dead samurai helmets) to say that all things pass - but maybe there`s a positive note in there, in that `grasshoppers sing`

Takadachi gikeido
Rampant on horse
Yoshitsune
Rampant on dumper truck
Highways Development Agency

This poem is fairly straightforward. I was angry when I wrote it, and I`m still angry. Yoshitsune was a 12th century heroic figure (look him up in Google!) who was forced to commit seppuku by the emperor (ritual suicide - you dress in your finest, kneel on the floor, thrust a short sword into your guts and twist it. Then a guy behind you chops your head off with a loud yell. Nice.) . He`s one of Japan`s best known and loved tragic figures. He committed seppuku at, or near takadachi gikeido in Hiraizumi, where he was the guest of the feudal Fujiwara`s. Hiraizumi was razed to the ground and has never recovered. Bassho came here in 1689 (500 years after it all happened) and wrote one of his best known poems here:

summer grasses
all that is left of great warrior`s
imperial dreams

then sat in the grass with his companion, Sora, and wept. I stood on the very spot where this happened, and where Basho sat and wept, and saw the same thing Yoshitsune had seen as he died: the broad sweep of the river, a sandbank, the littler river coming in from the left, the bulk of the mountain, massive against the sky in front (I`ll give you names again, tomorrow) ... and a massive great by-pass being built right in front of me! I am going to protest! I have a duty as a poet to protest! I could be the lastpoet to stand there and see what Yoshitsune saw as he died, what Basho wrote about. How DARE they build a by-pass in front of it? What is it with Japan`s cultural heritage?? And I believe Hiraizumi wants World Heritage Status. A joke, no?