This following poem illustrates a number of the Japanese forms:
PARADIGM
Why does the brook run?
The banks of the stream are green. — MONDO
Why does the stream run?
The banks of the brook bloom
with roe and cup-moss, with rue. — KATAUTA
The trees are filled with
cups. Grain in the fields, straw men
talking with the wind.
Have you come far, water-
borne, wind-born? Here are
hounds-tongue and mistletoe oak. — CHOKA
When the spears bend as
you walk through vervain or broom,
call out to the brook —
it will swell in your veins as
you move through broom or vervain. — WAKA (5-7-5, 7-7)
Have you spoken aloud? Here,
where the swallows' crewel-work
sews the sky with mist?
You must cut the filament.
You must be the lone spider. — TANKA (5-7-5, 7-7)
The bole is simple:
Twig and root like twin webs in
air and earth like fire. — HAIKU (5-7-5)
-- Lewis Turco
From Seasons of the Blood: Poems on the Tarot in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition; and in The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.
