what will I do about Liberation.

6:30       bath

charcoal.       black.       the fire part red

the ash pure white

March

Up in dirt alley

eat korean food

drink white doboroku out of bowls

broil strips of beef & liver over coals

finish off with raw cow’s womb

in sauce, jade-white and oyster smooth

piss against the slab posts of the highways

overhead,

bar girl girl-friend with a silver trinket cup

hung on a neck-chain, she, gives us,

all beer free.

sift through night streets,

Kato, Nagasawa, me, Sakaki,

okinawan awamori bar

clear glasses full up to the brim

like flavord gin—must millet—

with choppt onion.

whirl taxi by

glass door opening sharks, their,

eyeballs to the sky—

in coffee, tight butt tress;

to station where the world trains meet

I south around the loop

yellow writhing dragon full of drunks

& hall the windy concrete of

Zojoji.

April

Firework bangs echo up the valley

a twelve-foot snake banner

glides off a bamboo pole at the top of a pine

two hundred people for lunch.

black umbrellas drying in the sun

—wash the red lacquer bowls

and arrange on trays;

cherry

white blooms through the hilly country.

in the back right, lotus root

agé, konyaku, and a mikan.

front center sliced vinegared

cucumber and udo.

middle, sweet red beans and

salt yellow pickles,

front right soup

white floating tofu

front left a tall red bowl with a bowl-like

lid full of white steaming rice;

back left, low bowl with a round cake

of special-fried tofu under the lid.

used trays come back

wash in heated water:

a wood tub three feet wide

drain in a five-foot basket

on bamboo grating,

dry lacquer-ware twice and stow it in boxes

carry them up to the

right front corner of the white-plastered

store house

joined to the temple by a plank

over the mud out back where

corrugated iron sheets tilt

over stacks of short firewood.

zokin in buckets of water.

wipe the long wood beams

wipe the feet of the Buddha

wipe under bronze incense stands

firecrackers boom from the shrine down the road

five go of vinegar, four go of sugar

five sho of rice;

old women half double scuttle to toilets

hoisting kimono       enroute to the door

the PA loudspeaker plays songs, plays the chants

of the priests in the hall, the

Dai-Hannya, Perfection

of Wisdom

at Dragon Cloud Temple.

Five Hundred year Festival over

they load in the busses

or walk to their farms.

we wash ricepots, teacups, and bowls

baskets, dippers, buckets, and cauldrons,

take a bath, drink saké, and eat.

sitting on stools in the high-ceilingd kitchen

wind in the fir and the pine—

get under the quilts laid out on the mats

talk in the dark, and sleep.

May

Sitting and resting on the crest, looking far

out over Yokkawa

to a corner of Ohara—

Sugi and fir and maple on the half-logged hill

A delicate little hawk floats up

hunting delicate little country mice to eat.       Lute