Nihon: What God Would Make This?
The God of the Darker Jersey
sidles up to the expressway.
Present, too, the God of White
which is the new black.
Firemen slash orange suits through a delicate
filigree of ripped-out confetti:
This is the God of Unmarriage.
Meanwhile, the God of Simile makes a salaryman say to reporters:
“The skyscraper was flapping like a sheet in the wind.”
•
There is a God this day,
but it isn’t the God of Man With Brown Hands Unclasped,
spread on green trousers; & an upturned, empty
pot plant beside his work boot.
No God for the man who wears the Japan sun in his scarf.
No, that is the God of Photographers,
who paints in the red detail
to finish off
the photograph
as the man kneels beside his house
(and his mother is still inside).
Jo Aitchison