17 10 07

the small rural
newspaper soon
read through

Ozaki Hosai, (whose poem that is, in translation by William J Higginson) the early twentieth century Japanese poet, led a troubled & alcoholic life. Perhaps his drinking arose from the fact that he was not allowed to marry the woman he loved, as she was too close a relative. He worked in insurance for many years, before becoming a Buddhist monk at Shodoshima (small-bean-island). A colleague in insurance described him as reeking of alcohol early in the morning. Although fellow workers wore business suits, Hosai owned no clothes except a pair of pyjamas & a tuxedo, which is what he wore to work.

the nail box:
every nail
is bent

Hosai was a chronicler of the overlooked. Just outside the door here, next to the roll of waiting-to-be-used sheep fencing, is a handleless feed bucket full of nails. Each one is rusty & as unusable as bent nails (though in years gone by I’ve straightened & reused many a pulled nail).
De tha dol?, too, our small newspaper here is very soon read through, scanned eagerly for news of distant neighbours, notices of any change in shop opening hours or a fundraising event. Though we go back to it the following day, for fear of having missed something. A sheep dog trial is a big event here, where we really do leave our doors open. Who’d come in but neighbours? There are no burglars, where even a visitor’s straying dog is seen a mile away by more than one pair of eyes. As I recall, there’s only been one theft recorded in De tha dol? in recent months – back in May, a sundial was taken from a garden in Ardnastaing & featured in the Letters Page. Neighbours come & go, entering houses at will, to leave mail given them by the postman for safe delivery. Once, here, my neighbour came in while I was away at the ferry. She was in need of a drink, but since I was not in, took a bottle & glass & had a drink at the table. Then, when I wasn’t soon back, wandered off with the bottle. I took this as a compliment. She knew me well enough to know I’d have happily joined her in a drink & sent her away with a bottle; if she’d appeared next morning in a tuxedo, we’d both have known that’s how life gets.
I’ve carried small poems of Hosai’s in my head for more than thirty years, the way sheds & porches carry tins & boxes of bent nails & torn-slotted screws. It’s proof, as if needed, that poetry, when rooted in the personal, the closely observed, moves far beyond the cultural grounding of its origin & becomes culture.

at midnight
a distant door
pulled shut