The Firing by Gary Snyder

To John Chappell(1931-1964) and Les Blakebrough

The still living poet visiting the two potters

on a motorcycle

and on motorcycle the dead potter would die

the next year in the last continent

and now on my monitor

the living one a withered old man

skin more than flesh over bones

speaks of his art

paints a pot with shellac

after having left Tasmania behind him

the dead one in an old photo from Japan
(or New Zealand, we don't know)

part of history now in white-and-black

wary

the eyes looking at us

seem to have known the spread of time

awaiting

and both live (and the dead lies dead,

remembered)

in the poem written by the poet

on that long ago gone day

whose fires have gone cold

fifty-two years ago

the art remains, crisp

23.03.2015