THE CONFESSIONS OF A MASK

At the zenith of the sun, the tanto enters the horizon of the word
Made flesh.With iron and words we dig all our lives to return
To the earth; each good ruin once answered to a call, had a name.
Buried in our flowering heads, always the patient skull of time.

You call the army* to pride and arms to defeat the Yank’s dull
Popcorn reign, and, laughing, they raise their wooden swords
And jeer: a hero turns clown in the endless November noon.
You step back into the room and kneel down the farthest

From Hirohito’s* crown. By the sword’s* sharp ease, you cut
Your muscled abdomen in two; in your word-breeding hands,
Lift out your gut steaming, like noodles, offering the lost king
Other-worldly victuals, divine grace. Morita’s* sword

Wavers in his hand like the banner of an ancient empire caught
In an AC’s draught; and, so, Koga* strikes. We lower our masks:
A puzzling fiction is borne of blood, the ink powering the arts.
We search for a pattern and meaning in Mishima’s scattered body parts.

* The name of Yukio Mishima’s first novel.
* The US would not allow the Japanese army to wear arms.
* After Japan’s defeat at the hands of the US in World War II, emperor Hirohito said he was not divine in his origin as the political and cultural right wing would have it.
* Mishima committed Suppuku, a Samurai rite of committing suicide by disemboweling himself, and then allowing himself to be beheaded by an assistant. This was on November 25, 1970.
*Masakatsu Morita, an assistant of Mishima, who could not sever his master’s head as the rite demanded-after Mishima stabbed himself.
*Hiroyasu Koga, another assistant who was present and did the needful.