.
You insist you must drag me down to the bottom of the pond of the Kyoto garden. You insist we dive. If only I could see that indifferent display of oversize carp under a motionless gloss, as if they too knew that it was, solely, they that rendered this empty pond momentous reflecting motionless looks, capsized, yours and mine. These carp alter their colours according to what the season is. This afternoon, you say, I could see yellow, auburn, orange and beige, striped. It is, in truth, an eventful pond. Incised by the cormorants’ perfect line. A dozen of them. Worshipping the late autumn sun. As if each were hiring a pole like wordless passers-by who rest briefly on stripy deck chairs for a coin while I stand and watch, as if, you say, my fate were that of the deck chair attendant’s . . . Yet you hesitate to mention the pigeon tree at length. That stands so fecund in the middle of the garden shrouded with curvaceous pigeons like apples or pomegranates as if it were the tree of life itself. A life that lasts as long as this sentence withstands.
Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.
See notes on contributors to this issue here.
