Breakout

[addy]

This is gorgeously crafted. The theme ties together really well... in the Japanese aesthetic, they accept that a certain beauty to be found in the passing of things, where the point of it isn't to forget/ bury the image but it isn't to get caught up in remembering either: you look on and accept bleak and changing things, past to present to future, with the proper reverence and distance to achieve "beauty". So seeing the narrative turn an immersive and critical eye on that cultural aspect is really interesting. Wonderful to read.

The carvery lunch at Grandad’s RSL
is all we can afford these days, a treat
for battlers. There’s a smell of yesterday
piped across the floor, where vets hum foreign songs
and drink about the war. Very evocative description

But the carpark today has a busload of
photo-collectors, clicking their Nikons and
smiling inscrutably. And he coughs and checks,
the old man, balks and walks away.

Don’t go in there, son, won’t go in there
Ripped out my nails and burned off my hair, son
Don’t go in there, I won’t go in there

So off to the caf for a java and a posh bit to eat
while his demons devour five dollar pork
at the opposite end of the street
and his yesterday-smell is further away
than tomorrow’s insistence on leaving behind
the crippled, the starving, the burned and the blind
the edges torn out of the mind Really like the flow in this stanza, the pace is picked up perfectly for the thoughts

The garden that Nakajima created is quiet
in contrast, each November when tireless shutters
and lenses are stowed beneath the hush. Sakura Matsuri
still echoes, though the best blossoms have long since blown
away. I don’t ask if there are cherries on Kokoda
or lining that damned railway. Why rake the sand
with the nails of dead soldiers? Haunting image

It is a haiku landscape that sparks the dreaming. This
silent bonsai is not its father elm. What seems strange
is simple through another eye, and I
can only ask.

Grandad lived and died in yesterday. He is headstone
heavy on hard won ground, but I found a pebble
that sang the songs of mountains. This part is perfect.