SOUND OF A BROOM SWEEPING ACROSS THE EARTH

The sound of a broom sweeping across the earth

has been created by me this fall

In the poem I see a bamboo grove behind your house

where the chapped hands of your father gathered a bundle of bamboo sticks

Three chips showed up on his bamboo knife

Two buttons missing from the front of his shirt at unknown times

You brought this broom made by him into autumn

In an open area in the forest smoke from burning waste grass rose into the sky

Night wind blew at will in this poem

I created a sound—it

stays close to hard concrete, close to

each dusk and dawn of this fall

Were your father still alive

at present he would be in a certain corner

his hands familiar and strange to you

covering his collar