Thursday 17 October 2013

Kintsukuroi - Golden scars

Ready for the weekend? Here's a prompt to keep you alive. It's this week's episode of delight over at The Queen Creative and we are told:

Kintsukuroi is a Japanese noun meaning “to repair with gold”; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

Firstly, it's a great word. Just say it out loud a few times. Cheaper than a yoga breathing class. Secondly, it has made me write another poem. Poems come to me in a dash, I can't help them. And once they are down I find it very difficult to change them. These poems of mine, I think they might be broken. But if you, by any chance, have any gold handy to help them out, like words, please stitch them together below. You can make them more beautiful, after all. Much appreciated. 

Golden Scars

Time ravages everything. 
Nothing can be saved. 
Wind whispers, stones crumble
People age, art fades.
Times pieces together meaning
For us to see its place
And beauty lies not just in colour,
Nor stone or stature, nor form or face.
Time cracks and wrung hands plead
Nothing stays as it should
But what is a painted Acropolis
Or Machu Picchu with a roof?
Time’s golden scars tell tall tales
A slashed, re-beautified tribe
Of carefully broken and re-pieced pieces
That are given second lives. 
So time, while ravaging, stitches richly
And the wind will wind its way
Through crumpled hearts and history,
Yet everything can still have its day.

Please visit other writers starring in this week's For The Promptless episode by clicking on the television screen that still works:

5 comments:

  1. I hadn't looked at it that way. Golden scars. Hm. Love the poem. It means so many different things, depending on how one reads it. Or reads into it. Which is why poetry is so ... poetic.

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    1. Marilyn, thank you for reading and your lovely comment. There's so much broken greatness in the world, but that's what time does. Nothing will ever stay the same, and that's OK in my book. Let the scars tell a story.

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  2. Beautiful poem Laura. I'm fascinated by this concept of kintsukuroi. It reminds me of what John Keats said: "Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

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    1. Thank you so much! Yes, wonderful quote :-)

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