Red Fuji. (New Revised Version).

July, month of the sun god.
He opens the doors of his furnace
To scorch our faces
And turn the green land ochre.

I take the calendar off the kitchen wall
To study a startling image of Mount Fuji,
An icon of power that burns my retina
As I stare into the fierceness, the searing slopes
Of melted rocks streaked with jagged shards
Of wounds and scars gouged by white hot lava.
A fiery cone, old as the earth is old,
That dominates a placid summer sky
Patterned with fleecy clouds.

I sense that it is evening, although the sky is blue
And the transient clouds frail as new born lambs
Lost in their wide new world.
Nothing in this painting is plain or simple.
It is the evening sun that turns the mountain fiery,
And the lava streams are merely gullies of snow
Left over from the freezing winter days,
But the illusion of a mountain made of fire
Is the terse reality of the artist`s vision.

There are no people portrayed in this painting,
No wise observers of the powers of nature,
No tired old travellers lugging heavy loads
From one part of the island to another.
If there was just one merchant trudging through the heat
Then perhaps this vision would cease to terrify,
But we, who live outside the time and space
That the artist Hokusai inhabited
Are left alone to imagine what he thought
When he first prepared the printing blocks and paper.

July, month of the sun god;
The whole world is on fire,
Or so it seems.
And we look on afraid       lost        and without hope.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 11th. - 12th. _ June 12th. - 14th. 2019.
Illustration for the month of July in my Japanese Calendar.