Burden
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
All the cherry blooms
I saw today have become
A pink load on me.
~ Sobaku [freely and unfreely paraphrased by Whidden]
Sobaku’s postscript to his painitng accompanying this poem reads,
“To enjoy oneself with the cherry blossoms all day is to be bound by the ties of love.”
As serious as life has now become,
Real poetry is far more grave. It knows
What love is and what life itself must plumb.
He walked in silk embroidery that glows
Beneath the pink, pink, pink that blossoms gave
In canopies and canopy above.
The light was pink and pink and pink, pale, grave
And doomed and thus perfection. He knew love.
The gorgeousness of silk protected arms
In sleeves of gloss. The petals could not scrape
Him. Gorgeousness protected him from harms
Though petals were more pretty than spring’s crepe.
They harmed him still, still landing in his mind,
Where voiles of doom were banished and enshrined.
~ Phillip Whidden