Bats and Black Silk

(Leaf 72) – Reflection

 

Paul Binnie - Moon Over Shinobazu Pond (1998)

This is another of my poems inspired by walking round Tokyo’s Shinobazu Pond after sunset.

 

 

Bats weaving

black silk,

over Shinobazu Pond.

Mrs Emma Peel

(Leaf 71) – Senryu (or, witty tom-foolery)

 

Modern Mrs Emma Peel and John Steed, the traditional English Gent’ . Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin. Slinky catsuits, miniskirts and leather boots; plus, a red carnation buttonhole, bowler hat, and neatly furled brolly. Lotus Elan and Bentley. Two iconic characters from the British 1960s TV serial, ‘The Avengers.’ I first watched it when I was a child in the 1980s, and was instantly captivated. Smart, sexy and silly, all rolled into one. The perfect balance of danger and daring, humour and bonhomie, suave hero and sophisticated heroine. It remains an absolute classic. I later bought a DVD boxset of the two series from the Emma Peel era – the first, all in black and white, and the second, all in colour; and so I’ve become something of an Avengers ‘otaku’ (or, geek). The following haiku/senryu was inspired by, and is a tribute to my favourite episode and its black leather-clad heroine:

 

 

MRS EMMA PEEL (1965)

 

Dial a deadly number,

to connect –

direct to the heart.

 

 

‘Dial a Deadly Number’ was an episode which first aired on 4th December 1965. The plot revolves around a mysterious spate of unexplained deaths in the City of London’s financial district. Steed and Peel set out to investigate how a number of company chairmen and top investment bankers are being murdered, one by one. The episode revolves around timepieces, electronic bleeper devices, and wine-tasting contests. And not to forget, the regular convivial offer of “Sherry and biscuits?” – Can the dynamic duo of Steed and Peel solve the case before they get run down, blown up, or struck down by a deadly dose of digitalis – thereby, releasing them from time?

I feel the above short poem stands best on its own, but when writing it I found it rapidly gave way to the following linked sequence of verses, which – I am sure, as with the original senryu – will only appeal to those who might find themselves joined in a curious convergence on an unusual Venn diagram of true afficionados of the TV show and fans of haiku and short verse:

 

 

TIMELESS APPEAL: AVENGED

 

Dial a deadly number,

to connect –

direct to the heart.

 

Barbados >> London,

cupboard class –

the Maquis saves the day.

 

A vintage classic –

… from the northern end

of the vineyard.

 

A release from time:

“Sherry and biscuits?”

– Don’t mind, if I do!

 

As timeless –

as one of Fitch’s

stopped clocks.

John Steed and Mrs Peel

– will never not

be needed. 

 

 

A dapper bachelor pad

- Steed makes tea

for Mrs Peel.

Above the Clouds

(Leaf 70) – Reflection

 

Bashō famously wrote a poem about not seeing Mount Fuji. For many tourists who visit Japan, seeing Mount Fuji is – of course – top of the list of their priorities. And in this modern-day ‘Instagram Age’, as a glance at today’s newspapers here in Japan will show, it has become a big problem in some small, rural towns. The difficulty in seeing Mount Fuji most commonly relates to the weather and the time of year. It is often occluded by haze or cloud. In spring it is usually clear, but the most spectacular views (I think) are to be seen in the autumn. We are very lucky, we can see Fuji-san from our balcony in Tokyo. And I have taken many spectacular photographs of the sun setting behind the famous mountain. I’ve also seen it on many occasions when travelling by road or rail. But one of my most memorable views happened when I was leaving Japan on a flight back to the UK.

 

Both above the clouds

– Fuji-san

from the aeroplane window.

 

 

Photograph credit: PickPik

Kusamakura

(Leaf 69) – Looking Back

 

In the late 1990s, I used to spend every August working with friends on an archaeological excavation in the Northamptonshire countryside. The site, where we camped, was set in the midst of a huge wheat field. At that time of year, the crop was almost ready for harvest. The dry, yellow ears of wheat or barley would crackle in the sunshine, and the smell of the earth and the warm summer air was wonderful. The following two haiku were each written separately, but they seem to make a good pairing when thinking back to those long summer days, hence I’ve married them together here (see also, Leaf 52 & Leaf 54). We used to put long, cut grass under our tents when we first pitched them in an attempt to give a softer underlay for our sleeping bags, but the grass soon settled down to the hard ground after a couple of weeks sleeping under canvas. Kusamakura (草枕) is the Japanese word for a grass pillow, it is often used as a poetic motif for those who choose to live simple and itinerant lives, such as monks or restless poets, like Matsuo Bashō.

 

 

So many summers

in the skylark’s song.

 

 

Wistful for wheat fields,

crackling in the sunshine

– kusamakura.

 

 

 All Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Baiyun Guan

(Leaf 68) – Reflection

 

The Baiyun Guan, or, White Cloud Taoist Temple in Beijing. I visited on a very hot, dry and dusty day in the summer of 2007.

 

 

A woman bowing deep

before the Eight Immortals,

straightens her back

– and lets out

a thunderous belch.

 

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

People's Square

(Leaf 67) – Reflection

 

When I first went to China in 2005, I stayed in the Beijing Hotel – the place from where the famous photograph of Tank Man was taken on the 4th June 1989. My room similarly overlooked Chang’an Avenue. I wrote the following poem after visiting Tiananmen Square. Overhearing an English-speaking Chinese tour guide leading his party of tourists towards the large monument to the People’s Heroes there, I thought there was something odd about what he said to them. It didn’t strike me until later: People’s Square is in Shanghai.

 

 

His arms

set at right angles,

and everything that’s

in between,

is People’s Square.

 

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

White Sandals

(Leaf 66) – Reflection

 

Sometimes, especially when travelling, we get a sudden glimpse of the sublime set in the midst of the everyday. I forget exactly where, but this poem was prompted by a sight seen somewhere in China.

 

 

Stepping so carefully

on the dirty wet tiles

of the footbridge,

in her white

high-heeled sandals.

 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

Sekikan

(Leaf 65) – Reflection

 

A sekikan (石棺) is a large stone coffin. Usually of some antiquity, they can often be seen displayed in castle grounds, or in open-air architectural museums – like these two, found at Himeji Castle. The one described in the following tanka was seen at Sankeien, near Yokohama.

 

 

In the sekikan,

the rotting corpse

of a cicada.

 

 

 

All Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Red Bricks

(Leaf 64) – Reflection

 

Summer is all about the sunshine ...

 

 

Red bricks –

receiving the sun all morning,

a warmth lingering

long into the afternoon;

reaching out, even after dark.

 

 

 

All Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Hakone Sekisho

(Leaf 63) – Senryu (or, witty tom-foolery)

 

The Hakone Sekisho (箱根関所) was the first ‘barrier’ station on the Tōkaidō (東海道), the main road which connected Edo (present day, Tokyo) with Kyoto, during the time when Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate. It was a way-station, set up to inspect and regulate the passage of arms and women-folk from the Samurai class – a means for the Shogun to maintain political control of the country and its people by controlling the regional, feudal lords who were expected to be loyal to him. There were fifty-three such stations along the Tōkaidō. When I first came to the Hakone Sekisho in 2004, it was the site of an archaeological excavation. Returning in 2009, it had been transformed (on the basis of those findings) into a full-scale reconstruction of what the original barrier would have looked like to travellers passing through during the Edo Period, between 1619-1868. The following poem was written in response as my jokey interpretation of what the old Edo-era master poet, Matsuo Bashō, might have thought were he to pass through the barrier today, much like an ordinary airline passenger with “nothing to declare” except a penchant for poetry, passing through a Customs checkpoint at a modern airport.

 

 

At the Sekisho

– no sword,

only my pen!

 

 

 

All Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Tōkaidō

(Leaf 62) – Looking Back

 

Following in the footsteps of Matsuo Bashō, I’ve walked the Hakone section of the Tōkaidō twice. First, in the winter of 2003-2004, and then, second, in the rainy season of 2009. Tōkaidō (東海道) means ‘East Sea Road.’ Hakone has one of the remaining paved stretches of the old road which joined Tokyo (or, Edo, as it was then known) with Kyoto. People nowadays more commonly travel between the two cities on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen, or Bullet Train. Walking this part of the Tōkaidō is a good way to escape the urban hustle and bustle, and imagine the Japan of an older era.

 

 

TŌKAIDŌ

 

Passing through

a mountain village

– sweet smell of woodsmoke.

 

 

 

All Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Under the Tree

(Leaf 61) – Looking Back

 

Re-visiting my hometown, recalling childhood roots in leafy suburban London ...

 

 

ONE AFTERNOON

 

Pausing on the path,

peering across the field; 

remembering – 

thirty years or so before:

 

Me and my pals,

sitting under this same tree,

skipping school in the sunshine 

– playing cards, and killing time

while day-dreaming of the future. 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

The Thames at Night

(Leaf 60) – Reflection

 

George Hyde Pownall - Tower Bridge at Dusk

Looking back, having grown up in London, it seems like much of my life has revolved around the River Thames. In the 1980s, London’s docks were mostly derelict. It was a quiet, forlorn and forgotten sort of place, empty but still somehow overflowing with the remembered imprint of lives lived through times long since passed. Memories which were etched into every brick and cobblestone. I later spent many years living close by the river, in Limehouse. Not far from the places where my grandparents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents had lived long before and during the Second World War, when the docks were the target of the Luftwaffe during the Blitz. In many ways, I feel like I have Thames mud in my blood. When I lived in Limehouse, I used to enjoy looking out over the Thames at all hours, whenever I could, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the tides marking a timetable which London now largely ignores. I often used to get off the Tube at Tower Hill after work and walk slowly home along the river. It’s still quite a peaceful spot nowadays – and, despite all the redevelopment, I always feel as though I can still sense the memories of those generations of my forbears seeping out of the old brick walls and cobbled backstreets. Trying to find words to express this feeling while looking out over the river has always put me in mind of a poem by Thom Gunn, titled ‘The Conversation of Old Men’ (1993). It’s a poem which I’ve always admired and felt akin to, and it’s one which this poem of mine attempts to echo.

 

 

Full moon

over the Thames

 

alongside empty wharves,

the muddy waters

glint and glide.

 

 

The Pool of London (c.1927) Museum of London

Thom Gunn - The Conversation of Old Men
(Poems on the Underground/Faber, 1993)

Peace & Quiet

(Leaf 59) – Reflection

 

Franz von Defregger - Der Leser

Another stab, this time done solo (see Leaf 38), at writing a proper 5-7-5 senryu in Japanese. Not sure how well or if it even works, but the autobiographical sentiment is true enough and sums me up well.

 

 

長閑さや   目のつかれたる   本終わり

のどかさや   めのつかれたる   ほんおわり

Tranquillity | tired eyes | the end of the book

 

Which is meant to suggest something like:

 

Ah, peace and quiet!

– my eyes grown weary,

reaching the book’s final page.

 

 

Jingshan Park

(Leaf 58) – Reflection

 

Wherever I go in the world, I always like to seek out beautiful parks and gardens. This is a prose poem, or prose sketch, which I wrote, recording everything that I could see and hear, one very warm and slightly smoggy summer’s evening, while sitting by myself in Jingshan Park, close to the northern gate of the Palace Museum (where I was then working), in Beijing. The Museum (housed in the former Imperial Palace) is perhaps more commonly known as ‘the Forbidden City.’

 

 

By the Curling Dragon Juniper*, the warm fragrances of water and dust rising from the level flat grey paving stones and the lush green grass of the lawns. The patient minutes turning slowly into hours, as a gardener makes his slow and steady way along the green, around each tree and patch of rockery; the water always flowing, as his feet shuffle minutely along the edges of these flat, even paths. Black cap jays with calamine feathers and long, azure tails, dropping from branches to the grass, hopping from tree root to tree root, before a wingspread drift to another point just a few yards away. Black and white woodpeckers displacing one another from each tree trunk in relay-fashion, one to the next, to the next, to the next. Brown sparrows in dusty flutters, fast moving and bobbed, skittering through the air from these low branches to other low branches, and then other branches yet. The constant shuffle of feet over paving stones, level flat and grey; people drifting alone, in pairs, or parties. An occasional voice raising in a small snatch of song; little, brightly-coloured birds carried in a bamboo cages. A little squirrel disappears into a small stand of short bamboo, nose alert, poking and snuffling, here and there. The golden sun in a warm, pink haze. The milky heaviness of the sky. The warm air, sweltering into evening dusk. A small girl, standing on roller skates, looking up gives two sharp, gleeful screams to the squirrel she has chased up a tree. Before launching off, and rolling at pace across the level flat grey paving stones which sound and echo with xylophonic chimes. Gliding gracefully along on her skates; coming to a sudden stop, halted by her hands – palms held out in front, flat before her waist – when they meet the unmoving crown of her mother’s head as mother sits inclined, leaning forward, seated on a bench, busily re-tying the sprung-undone laces of her shoe. Snaffle and chack, snaffle and chack; chack-chack-chack-chack! – Fanning two silken feather tails, the black cap jays, take to the air between the tall pillar-like trees of Jingshan Park, where Chongzhen** came to make his final amends under Heaven.

 

6^th June 2006

Jingshan Park, Beijing.

 

Notes:

*The Curling Dragon Juniper was so named (c.1543) because it marks the final resting place of Curling Dragon (or Hoary Brows), the Emperor Jiajing’s favourite and most faithful cat.

**Emperor Chongzhen (1611-1644), the last Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who took his own life (either by hanging or strangling himself) near the Meishan, a small hill in present day Jingshan Park, close to the Imperial Palace, more commonly known today as ‘the Forbidden City.’

 

All photographs by Tim Chamberlain (2006 & 2007)

The Swan

 (Leaf 57) – Reflection

 

This poem was written about a swan which I saw making a very stately and regal-looking progress upstream on the wide, tidal stretch of the River Thames, known as the Pool of London, where I used to live at Limehouse. But the photos illustrating this post were taken by me at Grantchester Meadow in Cambridgeshire. I suppose swans are the real monarchs of Britain’s inland waterways, wherever they go.

 

 

Celestial and serene,

a swan gliding

along the sunlit path

of the Thames.

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain (2020)

Talking to the Birds

(Leaf 56) – Reflection

 

Tim Chamberlain - Talking to the Birds (2004)

This poem could be read as describing a scene I’ve seen in so many different places and different times in my life. It could be any number of old boys I’ve watched feeding the ducks and gulls at Shinobazu Pond, or it could be my own grandfather in his cottage by the canal, or it might even be me, in the not too distant future.

 

 

The old man –

talking to the birds

with breadcrumbs.

 

 

The Horse Trainer

(Leaf 55) – Reflection

 

Félix Thiollier - The Horse Trainer (1899)

I’m not very knowledgeable about horses or horse riding, although my Great Grandfather was an expert farrier. I have been horse riding when I was younger, but it was not something I took to easily. This poem is about a paddock I used to ride past on my bike when I lived in a small village in the countryside for a year or so in the UK. I always found it fascinating to watch the closeness and connection between this woman and her horse. Two living things, so very different in shape and form, but functioning together – thinking and communicating as one; or so it seemed to me, merely looking-on. Entranced by the disciplined, but dancelike elegance of it all.

 

 

Poised – the copper bay;

the long rein taut in her hand,

the lunge whip – held still in the air.

 

 

Hot Air Balloons

(Leaf 54) – Reflection

 

This poem is about a very vivid memory of one morning while camping in Northamptonshire, during one of the long hot summers of the mid-1990s.

 

 

A dragon blast

of hot air,

overhead

 

we wake –

early morning,

blue sky

 

hot air balloons,

drifting above

our tents.

Photographs by Timur Kozmenko (Pixabay).

 

Green Woodpecker

(Leaf 52) – Reflection

 

Jan Sevcik - Green Woodpecker, Picus viridis (NaturePhoto)

A few years ago, I used to spend a lot of time in Madrid and when I wasn’t working, there was nothing I liked better than to go and sit and read in the Retiro. I think it is one of the nicest public parks in the world. I spent many contented hours there. This poem was inspired by something I saw when glancing up from whatever I was reading, whilst I was sitting on the grass in the green shade.

 

 

Beneath tall trees,

his beak, makes no sound,

foraging in the grass

– green woodpecker.

 

  

Skylark's Song

(Leaf 52) – Reflection

 

Carry Akroyd - Skylarks, screenprint (birthday card)

Skylarks are one of my favourite birds in Britain. The song of the skylark is very distinctive, and for me it is highly evocative of the English countryside, where I often went camping in summertime. I have a really clear memory (which has stayed with me over many, many years) of cycling alone along a deserted country lane far from any town or village on a long warm summer’s day of solitary, two-wheeled exploration, and seeing a skylark hanging in the sky directly ahead of me – singing its heart out into the clear blue stillness of that beautiful day. I was sure it could see me from that high vantage. And at that moment, it felt like we were the only two living creatures communing in that calm, sun-drenched landscape. Forged from that fleeting moment – transiently lived, but transmuted into a lifelong memory – burnished like gold, and borne ever-after; a warmth within the soul.

 

 

Memories return

– the skylark’s song.

 

Bird Songs - Skylark Singing