Ambivalence

Through the emotional nuances,

Now Dickensian and now of paradise settings—

Those dark stone steps with the sheen of hands labor

Leading up to arched walk-bridge over stolid clear water

Skimmed by the tendrils of bloomed cherries around;

The steep gabled roofs of dark slates, Kyoto in the late 1920s,

The yonder metropolis amid Depression off the peripheral Yoroido

With its Tipsy House perched on a rocky cliff off the rocking sea waves below—,

As spontaneously poetic as how the innocence of a little girl of 12,

Chiyo-Chan’s figurative way of giving those speaking analogies,

The admiring heart finds a solace in the poetic narration,

Mingled with elegies as black and blue as folds of adversity;

As fiery as how her longing heart sees her dying mother

Hardly sinking into the feathery soft futon in the dark room;

As cold as the mute obtuse father’s selling his two daughters

While busying himself with his coarse hands tangled into a fishing net;

As treacherous as how the betrayal of first guise of grace.

And mingled with odes for every snippet of beauty presented

Adorned with her poetic analogies as melodious as twanging of her shamisen

Plucked by her ice-water numbed little fingers.

It’s just the beginning of meeting her second grace,

Her thousand handed God of Mercy, the Chairman,

Whose accidental tenderness to beget her immutable love

Like a limp life-tree touched by the providence of Mother Nature

As providential as how she is to spend the remaining feeding coins,

With the single force as strong as motherly love, for the same prayers.

It’s just the beginning.

But the admiring heart, now absorbed off from rawness,

Can’t wait to shed thus…

Lo, the old tree wrapped afresh with lushness,

The providence to be admired.

Hark, the din of traffic on the highway just over there,

The endless reasons to be there.

Then behold, an emaciated one lying

With limp skin as charred as rusted,

Yellow-shot eyes speaking the single hope…,

Another live drama of longing for but snatching away secondly—

The oddity as huge as a strong one’s dreamy eternity

As licentious as taken for granted till then.

Our eyes met.

I fidgeted, albeit I tried my best to hold back,

Like betraying my saintly words.

And the stony handshake,

The odd sense of touch,

I tried as my best gesture

As the others shirk like venom.