And the last of these poems from Japan that I'll read
is called "The Firing."
For Les Blakebrough and the memory of John Chappell.
Now, this poem refers to potting--
firing a kiln.
Two of my best friends in Japan were potters--
Les Blakebrough's an Australian, and John Chappell was English.
They were working on the traditional foot pottery
techniques of Japan.
And Japan was the center of real pottery--
ceramics.
Les Blakebrough is now back in Australia
where he's running his own kiln.
And John Chappell was killed in a motorcycle accident
this February in Australia when he went down there from Japan
to give a show.
I wrote this poem a week before John was killed and sent it
to him, not knowing, of course, that he was going to be killed.
But the poem, curiously, stands in front of his death.
Technical words.
Saggars are cylindrical fire clay units
used for stacking up whatever you're going to fire.
And segers are special fire clay combs
which will melt at different temperatures
so that you lay them out inside the kiln on a ledge.
And then you look through the peephole.
And when you see seger number one bending at the top,
you know that you've reached 1200 degrees.
And once seger number two bends at the top,
you know you've reached 1500 degrees and so forth,
establishing your temperatures.
"Bitter blue fingers, winter 1963 AD, showa 38.
Over a low pine-covered splay of hills in Shiga, west-southwest
of the outlet of Lake Biwa, Domura village
set on sandy fans of the sweep and turn of a river,
draining the rotten granite heels up Shigaraki.
On a 1957 Honda cycle model C, I rode with some Yamanashi wine,
'St Neige,' into the farmyard and the bellowing kiln.
Les and John, in ragged shirts and pants,
dried slip stuck to with pineneedle, pitch, dust, hair,
woodchips, sending the final slivers of yellowy pine
through peephole white blast glow.
No saggars tilting yet and segers bending neatly in a row.
Even their beards caked up with mud and soot,
firing for 14 hours.
How does she go?
Porcelain and stoneware-- cheese dish, 20 cups, tokuri, vases,
black chawan.
Cross-legged rest on the dirt, eye cockt to smoke.
The hands you layed on clay, kickwheeld, curling,
creamd to the lip of nothing, and coaxt to a white dancing
heat that day will linger centuries
in these towns and loams and speak to men and beasts
when Japanese or English are dead tongues."