Retrospective

I

No villagers come out today.
When the samurai is angry,
heads roll—
easy for him, like slicing blooms
from the marigolds.
A thousand days of rain
cannot wash away
the sorrows.

II

Hard to appease the angry samurai
from the mountain glens.
His rain of wrath has lasted years.

“Nothing works,” the villagers say,
“paying tribute, making a stand.”
But today they kept his anger out
with a border of yellow marigolds.

III

When the samurai is old,
he trades his sword
for a goldfish pond
and a bed of marigolds.
When it rains, he aches—
like any elder in the village.
When he sleeps,
he dreams an old man’s dreams—
a wife taken in love,
one child in the ground.
What lights await him now
beyond the mountain pass?