Something Small
by David G. Lanoue
Bye bye Issa,
you bald cantankerous
cold-shadowed
poet with the crazed
crooked hand.
My days of squinting
at your warm
brush-dribbled Japanese
that sputters row
by wondrous row
queer small discoveries . . .
are done.
The Great Bronze Buddha
sneezed and out
popped a swallow!
Eighteen publishers
reject my translations
of you . . . wouldn’t
sell, try a smaller press . . .
But the presses got
smaller and smaller
like the dark urgent spot
of a flea swimming
in a sake-bowl
in moonlight going nowhere.
Bye bye Issa,
never again will I dare
try putting to dum-dee-dum
English exquisite mornings
muffled in mist,
your paunch-shape fading
in clouds, chuckling
at something small.
From New Orleans Review 19.1 (Spring 1992), page 98. As it turned out, in 1991, before “Something Small” appeared in print, the 39th press the author tried did actually publish David’s first book of Issa translations (Asian Humanities Press).