Kabuki Moon, Ukiyo-e

Snowflakes, once more—
their downward scattering
like floating feathers of wild geese.

And I’m watching squirrel paw traces crossing
layers of hoarfrost,
as if describing a warrior clan’s fate
stylized on a kamon.

Where is the main keep of this vanishing castle,
high up, shaped by squalls,
its middle moat,
its white egret ghost, dispersed in a whorl of inked strokes?

There must be a woodblock at hand,
engraved with a reversed drawing,
ready to line up on rice paper
our climate of calligraphy and ice.

Stillness—always in an invasion of movement.

A formation of clouds
washing against a silvery kabuki moon
wraps up the day
with a whipping question mark.

Irina Moga

Wave Man

White-saffron moon over pines,
gliding in the ruffled mirror of the pond.

The day my lord lost his head,
later hoisted on a wooden pole
by the main gate,
his bloodied body dragged
through mud and snow,

I became 
a ronin in hiding, scorned, hunted,
my existence written
by the point of a long sword.

No anchor in my life, wave man
drifting from village to village
in search of darkness.

I’m lying low in the sour grass of this
winter’s happening —

fog, the currency of the script he wrote
as his jisei no ku, his death poem —
refuses to lift.

Irina Moga