The Torinomachi Pilgrimage Poem by Jan Owen

After the woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige


Sunset always makes her think of blood.
The rice-paper screen, blankly portioned out,
is a treaty pushed aside to seize the view.

Through the window's fine crossbars and struts
the pilgrimage is a black ant trail in coldest light,
all shadows barred. White Fuji cannot frown.

She and her just-departed guest are guessed
behind the black silk screen through innuendos:
tissues on the floor, kumada-pins to deck her hair.

A cloth and bowl wait on the sill by the cat,
a scruff-tailed, taut white knot in his winter fur.
He is the Overseer of the Seven Gods of Happiness

brandished above the procession crossing the marsh,
with one eye on the mice in the thatch below.
Rice straw makes his mistress think of gold,

then something left from autumn―tones and moods
which stay beyond the law, having no form or edge.
Three lines of wings departing late across

the leached-out sky, blessedly out of reach,
will erase themselves through dusk's code in the round,
but cat sits tight above the painted Yoshiwara sparrows.

The woman, lazily stretched out naked as non-
existence behind the screen, yawns and fingers a pin
whose tip's too sharp, thinks of a former friend

and a certain point to settle. One breath after
another is pacifying the room. Sunset is the gentlest
despair. Ah! she's made her thumb bleed now.