Nathan AM Almeida

[12 June 2019]

吳竹のうきふししけき世中にあらしとそ思ふ暫しはかりも

There’s something magnetic charismatic even poetic about the way you wrote your own eulogy (rhapsodies and melodies of a forgotten time kept alive by sheer repetition)

くれ竹のよゝのふる事おもほゆる昔かたりは我のみそせん

so I carved your name into the asphalt by the corner store on October the twenty third at eight-o-clock in the morning

梅は早咲にけりとておれはちる花とそ雪のふるは見えける

and by noon I had fallen in love with you (and what you say) but I think I had already forgotten your name by that point

けふのまの心にかへて思ひやれ詠めつゝのみすくす月日を

but I always felt that there would be more to talk about and more to be heard like rhyme is to time is to dance is to séance (by allegory, and the past can only be conjured so many times)

語らはは慰む方もありやせんいふかひなくは思はさらなむ

through piecing together the fragments of an age gone by; telling our story; telling it backwards, while the evening waxed and the moon waned.

かほる香によそふるよりは郭公きかはや同し聲やまさると