From a Work in Progress

Kyoto had seen very little of the war, though its truth had long struck bitter, painful blows. A world pregnant with unrealized hopes and dreams had now become wraith-like, tenuous, and contingent, its substance dim and opaque, melting away like warm breath on a cold, glistening mirror. People’s souls had grown dull and grey, and light—which might have inspired, if not encouraged, the weaker—failed. A faint, chill wind blew through an unhinged world, deadening warmth and love in what had been vibrantly alive and incorruptible.

Relentless and savage years had bred desperation and hopelessness. As ignorance and fear blossomed, so lies and rumours flourished like the tendrils of young plants, insinuating, twisting, and strangling ever tighter. Deprived of truth, people invented their own.

There were wounds, terrible and deep, but also tears, hot and wet; tears that at the end sealed life’s memories of what once had been with regrets for what would never be; nor would expectation or hope appease or comfort them. Whatever goodness had once flowered in the human heart, whatever compassion had once dissolved the stubborn boundaries of hate—these had been strangled and buried deep beneath the mounds of putrefying corpses that had known, and forgotten, love and the clear, bright voices of young children. The grey-white bones and ashes of husbands, fathers, and sons, never to return, were entombed in the breasts that solemnly received them. Death had cast off its secret shadow, let fall its decaying mask, and become life itself.

 With an arrogance born of manifest impunity, the faceless, impersonal enemy was bombing Tokyo relentlessly, night after night. With irony, (or was it kindness?), the majestic, snow-capped, peak of Mt. Fuji beckoned onwards wave upon wave of invisible planes, throbbing with all the malevolent and destructive beauty of the Machine Age, to reduce the capital to a palpitating, living mass of roaring orange flame and ashes.

But among the chaos and simple human wreckage, no voice was heard; just the silhouettes of naked, tortured figures, melting against the angry thunder and the screaming of the bombs, lovingly crafted and lovingly blessed. Soft hands alone sang softly. And afterwards, amid the blackened silence that neither blue flame nor child’s eye could vanquish or comprehend, the jellied sea of irrecoverable roasted faces accused only the past which had brought them the finality, irrevocability, and oblivion of death. The living they condemned, with silent, grinning, stares, to the horrors of the present. Not even the bonds that once had joined hand to hand, or lip to tender lip, could absolve or wipe away a murderous mass insanity, intent on a final vindication through fire and blood. Then, tears which had dried and clotted would no longer flow, words no longer comfort. Voice was given to liquid flame alone, and its golden speech was terrible and incontestable.

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To see some of Malcolm’s poetry, please take a look here or here. To see pictures of his house and a WiK event held there, please check out this link.