Classic and Contemporary Poetry
EASTERN TEMPEST, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: That flying angel's torrent cry Last Line: Of wisdom infinitely calm. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): Japan; Japanese | ||||||||
THAT flying angel's torrent cry Will hurl the mountains through the sky! A wind like fifty winds at once Through the bedragoned kingdom runs, An army of rain slants icy stings At many a wretch afield who clings His cloak of straw, with glistening spines Like a prodigious porcupine's. The reptile grasses by his path Wind sleek as unction from that Wrath Which with a glassy claw uproots The broad-leaved kiri, flays and loots Torn and snarled sinews, leaves for dead The young crops with the shining head, While blotched blunt melons darkly dot The slaughtered swathes like cannon-shot. The lotus in each pond upheaves Its sacred, slow, appealing leaves, And many a bush with wrestling jerk Defies the daemon's murderous work -- Yet nature stares white-lipped, to read In Chance's eye what desperate deed? A kinder god discerns, replies, And stills the land's storm-shouts to sighs; The clouds in massy folds apart Disclose the day's bright bleeding heart, Huge plumes and scarves black-tossing wide As if a Kubla Khan had died! From flame to flame the vision glows, Till all the pools of heaven unclose The lotus-light, the hue, the balm Of wisdom infinitely calm. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHOMEI AT TOYAMA by BASIL BUNTING SONG: SO OFTEN, SO LONG I HAVE THOUGHT by HAYDEN CARRUTH A MONTH IN SUMMER by CAROLYN KIZER TWO JAPANESE POEMS by WILLIAM MEREDITH KEEP DRIVING by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE WATERLILIES AND JAPANESE BRIDGE by ALICIA SUSKIN OSTRIKER A WALKAROUND, FOR NEKO; KAMAKURA 11/10/96 by JEROME ROTHENBERG AT TSUKIJI MARKET TOKYO: 1 by JEROME ROTHENBERG ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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