“when you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer / superstition ain’t the way”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, more Japonisme from another early Modernist:

Muramadzu, Arthur Davison Ficke

A mouldering Buddha sits as warden
    Beside the ruined mossy gate.
    He must be rash, or strong with fate,
Who mounts unbidden to this garden.

The pine and cypress intertwining
    Cover the lotus-pool with shade.
    But where the ancient graves are laid,
A dreamy veil of sun is shining.

I do not know what shapes are here,
    Nor why the sun so strangely shines ....
    It is a place of ruined shrines ....
The distant wind is all I hear ....

What secret makes this place beguiling
    I know not; nor what visions lost
    Stir like a frail forgotten ghost
While Buddha’s lips are faintly smiling.


Fiske is better remembered as a Western authority on ukiyo-e prints than as a poet. This first appeared in a 1907 collection, in a section of poems written while on an around the world tour that included his first visit to Japan. No one has been able to explain the title.

—L.

Subject quote from Superstition, Stevie Wonder.