A-bomb Dome, Tancho, I Have Begun the Folding of Cranes
J. David Cummings
War Poetry Contest 2010 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
Coming on it from the northeast on an early spring
afternoon, it is all in soft shadow. Dark but not
brooding dark. Yet a brooding settles on the ragged shape,
its open dome of twisted girders like wrought filigree
wrenching the sky within into tortured forms of blue,
and its blown out windows like notches of razor light
cut into remnant flesh—because one knows what it is,
what it means. Because one knows. Therefore ominous,
this afternoon darkness, as if the frame of human time
stood revealed. But then, when you circle to its sunlit side,
it seems a harmless thing. No more than a worn and broken
structure empty of its life, its voices, its industry,
a taupe shell of brick and concrete half-walls wanting
to fall, wanting winter's next increment of work—
but holding fast.
As for A-bomb Dome—
samurai's battered armor,
empty-headed helmet.
As for A-bomb Dome—
in the helmet's sky blank eyes
no view of Fuji.
As for A-bomb Dome—
old warrior's shoulder bones
warming in the sun.
As for A-bomb Dome—
silent walls in still decay,
acknowledgments of spring.
As for A-bomb Dome—
Buddha and the Bodhi tree—
and us, this ruin?
As for A-bomb Dome—
for August sixth, six haiku—
the cicada's shell.
You feel a troubled awe as you stand before it
in the warm April air. You feel the familiarity,
the strangeness as one. Here is the incomprehensible.
Here is what you have known from a hundred photographs,
here before you, silent, fragile, unfamiliar at last.
Try saying to yourself "like Roman ruins." Try thinking
"the past's leftovers," as if that could make us done with it.
It won't work. This lives now, has always lived—unbroken line
threading through wars lost in time and wars celebrated
in song and story, through flash-boom and black rain, through the eye
of this moment, through the next, and the next; so that there is
no safe harbor here, nor ever, no vast ocean of
unreachable time separating first horror from last,
ruined hope from ruined hope, nor victim from victim.
But now a new gene, white fire forged, living silent within,
counting down our lives. And here, this shell, here hibakusha stand.
I bow to it. I bow to those who refused erasure.
I bow before this impossible human nature.
TANCHO
As when five years after, in the brutal winter
of nineteen-fifty, their numbers down
to the twenty-five hunched low like white stone loaves
around a hot spring and the three that have strayed
onto the wind-cut snowfields, pecking hard
the ice-crusted futility: these red crowned cranes,
starved out, unsheltered, their kind hunted
down into death by falconer and farmer
in a mere one hundred years, here in this last place
of snowscape and volcano, bitter north sea island
so seeming far from the blast and scorch of war,
and too weak now to bring the message the gods
have uttered, and too weak to lift aloft
our rag souls toward the Western Paradise...
As when he returned to them, emerging
out of a line of spruce like a lone gray
apparition, and not empty-handed
this time, refusing this time the severing,
though seeing them I doubt he thought the ancient names—
"emissary," "carrier of souls," "bearer
of good fortune, long life"; yet his charity
was remembrance as he fetched out the grain
the worn sack concealed and began tossing
to them their new life, began seeding it.
A single farmer, standing alone somewhere
near the edge of the great Kushiro Marsh,
the Akan at his back, Hokkaido
winter in his bones. What possessed him?
*
small sanctuary
tucked deep away
on an island
of brief summers
and faithful winters
how few were the hands
that brought them refuge
and how few these few
hundred breeding pairs
and saved, they are not safe
*
This is not the Isle of the Blessed,
and that is not the absolute white.
Bright-red crowned head, black bill, black neck scarf,
bustle of fine plumes, velvety black,
and white snow the breast and wings and back.
They put to the air, a graceful lift
of large bodies, line of spruce falling
away, winter blue ocean of sky
washing over them as they form up
their flight, loudly calling as they go—
telling you this is the real,
singing the great impossible,
telling you everything.
I HAVE BEGUN THE FOLDING OF CRANES
at the start, a sweet awkwardness
this prayer of peace so new
though already it moves
within the compass of my hands
how can I say it? as if I
could never fold this little
messenger into being
as if I had never stopped—
first, an uncreased square, color side up
a shape seldom found perfect in Nature
valley folded along diagonals
two triangles appear and disappear
the square reopened, turned over, folded
east, unfolded, folded north, unfolded
two rectangles of hue come and go—
three primal forms the eye perceives inside
the true world of forms, vain inventions
there and not there yet forms at the very
heart of that old worn dream of mastery
(only the circle will make no showing here)
and so the error of the ideal world comes
calling, the world of lifted-out perfection
overarching and there follows geometry
and number, science, philosophy, and sword
there follows the beauty wrought by human hands—
as with this small abstract creature forming
in the two worlds simultaneously
as with it unfolded for the last time
the four corners brought one by one together
the color square reappearing, half its size
and with flaps right and left, top and bottom
primal form same and altered, evolved
more useful now to complex intention—
second, folds and forms elaborate
symmetries abound, turn, reverse, or break
the many follows quickly on the one
the dream of the organic arises
shapes, seeming to live unseen inside each
other, fixed in some elsewhere existence
are coaxed by hand and thought to come through
themselves to me, revealing an implicate world
wherein it waits and in the paper foldings
only the simplest complexities show
but these are dazzling as they advance
toward the crane of peace so hidden here
I cannot yet imagine her—
but she is coming
through the frog's mouth as it opens wide
through the long diamond of the petal fold
through the corners freed, tapering into legs
through two transforming book folds
and still not unbloomed petal into crane, but fox
the fine face of the fox arrives
and she is in there, she is nearly
visible as fox's ears soon change
into shy wings, his long narrow nose
into tail and neck, and the neck's tip
reversing into head and pointed beak—
yet she will not come whole into this world
until at the very last I breathe
a long slow breath into her body
and gently, gently pull open the wings—
third, nothing less than this
*
birds—
we called them birds
they haven't flown (yet)
they sleep upright, silent in their silo roosts
they make safe your children the MAD have said
and
inside each bird a warhead
inside each warhead a design
inside each design a calculation
inside each calculation an algorithm
inside each algorithm an improvement
inside an improvement my name
which is how, years later, he put it, old boss
at a Mozart concert intermission running across
me in the lobby—of course the usual talk
of forgotten colleagues, of weather, of music—
then he says, our work worked out fine and by the way
he says, there's a Moscow nuke and your name's on it
and he barks a quick laugh, his eyes moist and shining,
and he eyes me sharply and I have no idea
what he sees I fear the worst
therefore...
therefore, I am become Death again
cold logic has it
and I make myself imagine it
the billions
by my mind's small hand
hurried into death
and if the unflown birds never fly
and if the myriad suns never light
and logic relents?
and I make myself understand it
my eternal name reversed, reversed again
unknown to me in all Time's passing
and your name
the shape of silence
and your voice
the form of silence
tell it now to me
tell the names we will carry into the earth
the cold light has shown the letters and the stones
and the veil is burning in clear ice
and no innocence is left
*
and the moment when the first crane came
into my world, and how, when I set
her down to stand wing-raised and silent
on the table, there seemed surrounding
her an egg of warm light and stilled air
and she was the most gentle being
I had ever seen, and how it seemed
pure moment, in which time had not yet
begun to act on her
was she not
soul itself just before the journey
light and form and vulnerability
caught in the fine steel net of the real
a seed set down in this soil
the very first of her kind?
and imperfect, she was perfect
and here—in this space, this time
in the living heart not a thing
lifted-out not the lit distance
not apparition floating beyond
the reach of fingertips
and she is the smallest gesture
imaginable in the work
that awaits the twelve billion hands
this little bird of bright paper
seems hardly the sure occasion
of new beginnings yet no one
of this age of blood and ash and bone
can know which act seeds, which translates
which reverses the pitch of war...
