This is a revised version of ‘Yahara’, read at the last Stanza meeting. It has benefited from some of Robbie’s comments.
Leaving Okinawa
August 1945
How sad to watch
the Kiyan Cape
now carpeted in green,
after it was dyed red
by the blood of warriors.
Colonel Yahara
Some have criticised me.
They say I surrendered,
a disgraceful charge
against a senior staff officer,
a gunjin, a military man.
Wear down the enemy!
jikyusen was my plan,
rejected by my superiors.
Their offensives sacrificed
a hundred thousand men.
I mingled with refugees,
waiting for the right moment
to escape, report back to Tokyo.
A loose word delivered me
into the hands of the enemy.
The Americans tell me
I’ve done my duty.
When business goes bad,
you start over again.
You don’t kill yourself.
Perhaps, when defeat came,
I should have died.
Too late now.
I was never a prisoner of war.
I am satisfied.
The rhythm and rhymes/half-rhymes give your poem a flow, Martin, that was perhaps lacking before. The form works really well and I wouldn’t change a thing.
Yes, flows nicely now.
Yes I like this too, Martin. It has the manner of Japanese haiku, the terseness and clarity of image. The form suits the subject and the way you have used the language fits with the choppy rhythm of how Japanese sounds to my ears. It reminds me too of some of the Japanese stringed music I have listened to, each note very singular and separate.