Bamboo Shoot: thoughts, words, writing …

… another year
....yet still green
............................ —the ginkgo leaves
.....fall from my notebook …

***

24.10.97: Kew. A morning of coffee spoons and conversation, a brief Italian extravagance for lunch, and now—the brilliance of a late October afternoon as time ambles itself away into non-existence around The Gardens. The mind floats somewhere between mislaid memory and bright enthusiasm for yet another collection that would be my first; and already a small notebook is fat with coloured leaves, sketches, and some thirty poems that like as not will never see the light of print. Colours and smells of autumn swirl about me as I retrace old steps towards the Pagoda and Chokushi Mon …

.....flagpole,
.....there in my youth—
.....I can hardly look up at you

*
Built in 1910—a near life-size replica of a sixteenth century Buddhist temple gateway in Kyoto, Kew’s Gateway of the Imperial Messenger has changed since I saw it last. Time and the English climate have done neither of us favours; but Chokushi Mon has recently been rejuvenated by a team of Japanese master-craftsmen—themselves a dwindling breed. Copper tiles have replaced old lead and cedar shingle, finely carved panels have been repaired or reworked; and set now, jewel-like, in a newly constructed landscape—amongst flowering cherry, bamboo, acer, Kurume azalea and other Japanese cultivars—something like a former magnificence has been restored. Sunlight once again returns enhanced from the lacquers and warm-toned timbers of Chokushi Mon …

.....rain comes through my thatch,
.....and summer sun stings my head—
.....telling me something

Japanese gardens are, in general, more formal than their English counterparts; though not in any regimental sense—no merely mechanical juxtapositioning of plants and artefacts. The aim is always an aesthetic mix of tradition and balance, symbolism and simple beauty; and in designing the Japanese garden at Kew, a prime concern has been to both complement Chokushi Mon and blend in with western botanical surroundings. Old established pines have been allowed to fittingly share the stage with Hinoki—the Shinto-sacred conifer of whose wood Chokushi Mon is constructed; while in future years, the Japanese custom of severe clipping and pruning will be restrained, thus allowing most plants to grow towards their natural shape. Yet overall, a strong spiritual sense of Orient is aroused symbolically by the way the landscape is constructed. Chokushi Mon contains, and is encircled by, a fusion of principles that might seem to embody the nature of all experience.

There is a Garden of Peace that recalls to mind the roji or traditional tea garden—where one can follow stone lanterns, pebbled path and stepping stones to reach a barely audible tsukubai—a tranquil walk to rinse away the weariness of the world …

.....some samurai!
.....… aching ankles
............................forgot my thank you …
.....the taste of tea

… whilst elsewhere, a Garden of Activity evokes austere mountain sceneries with clastic rock-flows that tumble incessantly towards a gravel sea—a sea forever raked by unchanging waves and the flotsam from overhanging pines …

.....Chokushi Mon.
.....Please keep off the gravel.
.....… ‘footprints’ all over …

… and linking together tranquillity and action, the constant with the ephemeral, is a Garden of Harmony – an area of general and symbolic planting intended to reflect the natural beauty of the Japanese countryside. As yet this section is some ten years immature; but few will notice when, each spring, the senses are besieged by flowering of the loveliest of trees …

.....and after winter
.....what? The white cherry blossom
.....blowing in my face? …

*

Beneath a canopy of low-branched flowering cherry, I find the haiku stone of bluish granite. The haiku is by Takahama Kyoshi—written following a visit to Kew made in 1936; the stone itself donated by family in 1979 – some twenty years after Kyoshi’s death. There is a nearby transcript:

.....Even sparrows
.....Freed from all fear of man
.....England in Spring

So expressed, I do not care for these sentiments—they seem to me to have an air of ingratiating formality that I do not attribute to Kyoshi; after all, Japanese haiku are not necessarily treated faithfully by their translations. And then, perhaps, for whatever reason, not all haiku may be faithful to their motivating emotions; and indeed, there is something else that bothers me. For some time I stand brooding over Kyoshi’s stone, thinking about what Kyoshi really felt he meant in his own language, and whether he too … until I am joined by two young Japanese whom I’d noticed earlier. At distance, they had had the chattering full-of-lifeness of bright birds; now—in alien presence—they fall into unfathomable silence. And for a moment, I am incautious of my thoughts—I point …

..... –Not good haiku?
..... –Yeaah! Not good.
..... –It’s by Kyoshi!
..... –Hey, yeaah—He’s dead famous.
..... –But maybe not even true?...

…and I point again—this time to where, not far from the tsukubai, the stripped body of a small bird lies cooling in its last rays of sunlight …

.....near Kyoshi’s stone,
.....the crow pays close attention
.....to a crimsoned corpse


***
.......................................... … old established pines …
..........................................needles and cones fall to the bridge
..........................................twixt crane and turtle …



there is a specimen of Tai Haku
the Great White Cherry—much
valued in Japan. Between the 18th
& 20th. centuries, it is said to have
disappeared from Japanese culture
only to be restored from a new clone
found in an English garden.

***

........................................… the flowers fade,
........................................pressed between yellowing pages
........................................of an unopened book …


The haibun is about Time and looking for Kyoshi’s haiku stone in Kew Gardens. It records the more or less immediate responses to events on a sunny October afternoon in 1997, and was largely sketched out and written over tea and fruitcake in a nearby Refreshment Pavilion. After the first haiku, the writing is sectionalised by asterisks:

The Pagoda, built in 1761/62 stands at 163ft. The flagstaff—a single trunk of Douglas Fir, 371 years old—was erected in 1959 and then stood at 225 ft; it is not the one I saw in the 1940s (almost as tall). The lifespan of such poles is c50 yrs; and sadly, the 1959 flagstaff (third of the big ones since 1861) was dismantled in August 2007 consequent to the depredations of age and woodpeckers. It will not be replaced (I know the feeling).

In section two, prior knowledge and informational texts for visitors have been reworked and transformed to suit a purpose. The second paragraph might, perhaps, be read as a desirable description of western haiku; while the whole is interspersed with spontaneous reflective haiku conjured up by a stroll around the garden. The first haiku expresses regret; the second, self-distaste at the memory of attending tea ceremony in the wrong spirit (the author blames his aching ankles for social forgetfulness). A tsukubai is a dripping water basin—situated near the tea-house of a roji, it serves a symbolic ritual purpose. The third haiku observes the disobedience of squirrels etc; and the fourth expresses existential cynicism in a section which ends up referencing A.E.Housman.

Section three is plain accurate description.

The fourth and last section foresees the future. It has one haiku and one piece of hand-script. Cranes and turtles have mythological associations with longevity in Japanese and Chinese culture, and angular and rounded islands are common traditional features of Japanese gardens. At Kew, two such islands are linked by a narrow bridge that annually receives the buffets of falling pine cones. In Japanese culture, pine trees hold some sense of good luck or the permanence of human relationships; but in the haiku, I was thinking only of the ultimate destruction of all things, given time. The piece of hand-script is a late contrivance, and imagines some future annotation of the writing. It notes a fortuitous piece of knowledge that might also be read as a metaphor for the origins of haiku in the west—except, of course, that haiku has never disappeared from Japanese culture.
The final haiku is strongly connected to the very first haiku in the haibun, making the whole piece of writing circular; feeling its way through the transient nature of both real and recorded existence—in my ending is my beginning. After all, this is the fate of all writing—it gets recycled; like us. It’s what we’re meant to do—just re-record and fade away … The haiku also references the Bhagavad Gita through T.S.Eliot’s The Dry Salvages (part3 ls.1-5). It occurred to me that these last two disembodied haiku might also be seen as ‘haiku stones’ after authorial demise.

October 2007

by Bamboo Shoot
Salisbury, Wiltshire, England