Two more poems.
This is a new poem, also.
# It's called "View #45" after Hokusai and Hiroshige.
How many people know who they were?
Hokusai, Hiroshige, anybody?
Going once, going twice--
No, you guys already are smart enough.
You knew Addis Ababa.
You knew Ethiopia.
I'm not going to you anymore.
Who knows Hokusai, Hiroshige?
Japanese artists.
Can anybody be more specific than that?
Woodblock.
Thank you, woodblock print masters from the 19th--
from the 18th century.
The most popular artists in their day, Hokusai
was actually the elder master, and late in life
he did an amazing work called 36 Views of Mount Fuji, in which he
pretty much elevated what had been a popular folk
art of depicting everyday Japanese life,
to a much higher level because he actually took the people out,
and left the landscape in--
In the most gorgeous pure lines.
It's rarely been seen in the world, and history.
And meanwhile, young Hiroshige comes along, in his 20s,
and he does something called 53 Stations of the Tokaido, which
is a long, beautiful road in Southern Japan.
And he puts the people back in, and who
do you think the populace got drawn to more?
The one who took the people out?
Or the one who put the people in?
People in.
People in?
Anybody says people out?
No, the people in.
So Hokusai in his 70s, or maybe even older
but enjoyed this enormous popularity--
more than popularity, acclaim--
suddenly found himself sort of out of favor.
The reason why I'm writing this poem after them is because
for many, many years both of them
have meant a lot to me in well, for various reasons,
but the main reason for the poem is
that ironically, the person who took the people out
was someone who most of his life was
kind of interested in putting himself in the painting.
I mean, in the print.
Does that make sense to you?
Like, if you saw somebody, say, walking down the road
and his robe was blowing open or I don't know, whatever.
It could have been him, actually.
He put himself in the scene.
He wasn't beyond doing that.
And then late in life, he decided:
I'm taking all these people out.
Meanwhile, Hiroshige comes along and he puts the people in,
but he doesn't put himself in the scene
because he is so absorbed by the world around him
that he's only interested in taking the world
and getting it down into the print.
So they're doing all kinds of psychological flip-flops.
At any rate, be that as it may, it's
a short poem, shorter than what I just said.
"View #45"
I dreamt half my life was spent in wonder, and never suspected.
So immersed in the moment I forgot I was ever there.
Red-tail hawk turning resistance into ecstasy.
The patrolman joking with the drunk whose butt seemed
glued to the sidewalk.
A coral quince blossom in winter, pink
is the lover's present.
And tilting my bamboo umbrella against the warm slant of rain,
was I not a happy peasant crossing the great bay
on a bridge that began
who knows when, and will end who knows when?