{"id":2308,"date":"2012-04-25T09:33:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T09:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=2308"},"modified":"2012-04-25T09:33:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T09:33:12","slug":"samatar-elmi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/samatar-elmi\/","title":{"rendered":"Samatar Elmi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manuel Cortez and the Immortal Tree<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing\u201d\u2028Minamoto no Shitag\u014d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There was nothing left for me<\/p>\n

except to chase the ghosts of Cabral,<\/p>\n

Columbus and de Gama<\/p>\n

to the edge of the world<\/p>\n

which is where I found them<\/p>\n

with the rising sun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

At first I was amused<\/em><\/p>\n

by these little trees,<\/em><\/p>\n

kept by little people.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I never acquired my master\u2019s taste for deadwood.<\/p>\n

The grey ropes coiling and matting the trunk,<\/p>\n

wide brooms and ball crowns,<\/p>\n

his eye for grafting<\/p>\n

a fragile species onto firmer roots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I preferred the chokkan<\/em> bonsai<\/p>\n

the formal upright style. It reminded me<\/p>\n

of Lisbon, before the earthquake,<\/p>\n

and the lingering doubts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

No storm has ever harmed them <\/em><\/p>\n

the nurserymen, training<\/em>\u2028their bonsai into form<\/em><\/p>\n

a forest of akadama bowls<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I came to admire the bonsais\u2019 talent<\/p>\n

for twisting around guide wires,<\/p>\n

into something designed,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

foreseen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And how a master exploits<\/p>\n

the bonsai\u2019s daily thirst for light<\/p>\n

each lean preceded by a desire to lean.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The secret is letting them believe <\/em><\/p>\n

they\u2019re not dwarfs, rather<\/em><\/p>\n

Men are giants.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The finest bonsai in Edo<\/p>\n

were clipped from a sacred tree<\/p>\n

found in the scarred earth<\/p>\n

of a newly opened fault line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A well-trained\u00a0 bonsai outlives her master<\/p>\n

but through careful trimming and pruning<\/p>\n

he too will live forever.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Does this not show how far we\u2019ve come?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Samatar Elmi<\/strong> is a poet and poetry editor for Helicon<\/em> magazine. A mentee of Dorothea Smartt\u2019s on the Young Inscribe programme, he has been published in the\u00a0Young Inscribe Anthology, Scarf, Decanto, <\/em>and Exiled Writers Ink.<\/em>\u00a0Samatar is a resident poet at Numbi and has performed for the Arvon foundation. Samatar also translates Somali poetry, focussing on the work of Osman Gabyaee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manuel Cortez and the Immortal Tree   “A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing\u201d\u2028Minamoto no Shitag\u014d   There was nothing left for me except to chase the ghosts of Cabral, Columbus and de Gama to the edge of the world which is where I found them with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2308"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2332,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions\/2332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}