This poem was inspired by Hokusai’s series of landscape prints with the same title, produced between 1830 and 1832.
Thirty six views of Mount Fuji
In the foreground
too big for its own good,
fine wind, clear morning,
red Fuji.
Pushed to the sides,
this way and that,
far cries in Prussian blue.
Sunset, tea house, shop,
watermill, bay,
thunderstorm.
Then,
in the uncertainty
of a low horizon.
There, in the distance
dwarfed by a rogue wave,
three boats transporting fish
to the market,
spray falls like snow.
One mountain,
waiting for the end of time.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Privacy,
the emergency of the moment.
Solitude,
the longing of rock.
Odds & Ends - Poetry Blog 