| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
REFLECTIONS ON A JAPANESE SCREEN IN A CARLTON APARTMENT
Lorin Ford
(Wild Poetry Forum)
We’re as far from it, as far out now,
as centred on elsewhere as before.
Straw slippers, a flute for the wind,
incense, Zen art, the shrouded mountains
clutter the room with gestures of emptiness.
The real idea can be arranged
to suit the season, like cut flowers;
artificial grace argued by decor.
Bound feet? That’s Chinese and passé.
Today we embrace the bonsaied mind.
Culture wired to form is always in order
and art’s distortions are aloof from cruelty.
Have some barracuda sushi in the balcony garden
where wind tips the trays of gem-polished pebbles
and pits them at walkers below. There’s no view
of great-rooted blossoming from this height.
Remote as emperors flicking specks from silken robes,
we climb down the night into cars and taxis.
We spit our cultivated tastes
down the drain with the toothpaste, hide
our dirty laundry in the clothes dryer
and meditate on nothing.
Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “What I particularly like about this poem is its sense of humour, the way it pokes fun at global culture and the vision of multiculturalism that the middle-class can acquire through import shops and Pier 1. Yet there is a sense of loss that occurs at the end of the poem, a suggestion of real feeling, and it is this moment that turns the poem from cultural critique into genuine sentiment and makes the poem successful.”
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