Nara Park: Twilight Deer Feeding by Laurence Lieberman

Nara Park colored woodblock - AIC
Kawase Hasui

 

Nara Park: Twilight Deer Feeding

by Laurence Lieberman

Toward evening, sky’s aqua
darkens to ultramarine,
strangely brighter over bald Mount Wakakusa
(treeless, dry grasses burnt in annual
January fête) than over wooded Mount Kasuga,
abode of the gods. . . . We reenter these grounds—temple of the pagodas—
hurrying before sundown, before nightfall and the closing of gates,
bearing handfuls of small crackers
to offer the genial deer

one last, shy, long-nosed feeding.
We stroll in the deserted park,
dawdling. Are we sneak thieves? Or benefactors?
Why do we meander and leer behind?
It is twilight limbo. The deer, orbiting fitfully
in pairs all afternoon, now slink in passels of ten or twelve, or lurk
in shaded hedgerows. At our approach, they seem to dance sideways.
Or they float in sleep-languor,
neither toward nor away

from our glum coos and purrings
(now it is we who beg, not fawns
or does) . . . They move in weightless stupor,
a graceful bouncing on soft footpads
of paws, their just-lighter-than-air hindquarters
pitched to and fro, as if earth were sponge-turf on springs—flocks
of wingless, thin seraphim gliding across grassy cloud
scud, green cloud banks of sod.
The children sidle up

to a lone deer—strayed a few feet
from its group; he backs away,
sweeping with a band of others to semi-seclusion
in a glen of cedars. No hideaway . . . The after-
glow of long-spent sunset, a pinkish tint on lawns
fading to lemon-sallow glimmerings, pastes a faint layer of luminous
glaze, momentarily, on all surfaces—embrace of the last light.
Halos of muted light, in enchanted
low-toned brilliance,

encircle tree rinds, deer hides,
shrines. Temple walls shimmer.
The sheen floods near and recedes in flashes,
light recoiling upon the beholder’s eyes,

hypnotic—we blink, to no effect. The unearthly glow
dims, slowly fades into degrees of gray, the pinkish second skin
falling away, sliding off each surface. . . . A cycle of toots,
high-pitched, eerie, pierces
the blanketing dusk!

Horn-blasts from an unseen trumpeter.
Scores of deer leap in unison,
springing from many quarters, well over a hundred
becoming visible at once. Emerging from the woods
in a full three-hundred-sixty-degree circle around us,
as if born spontaneously from the horn which summons them (a punctual
daily signal), they converge upon a wisteria grove for sanctuary.
Following their course, the girls
try to intercept two

frail stragglers, arms outstretched
to enwrap each creature.
But the wiry featherweights, undeflected, with no
visible change in speed or direction,
slip past the puzzled children shaking their heads.
One fawn appears to pass, miragelike, through my stooping son’s
hips and shoulder—in my side view, a figure crosshatched,
composed of shimmering diamonds
and spheroids of light;

in front view; scrawnier and leggy,
slim as an angelfish
encountered, face to face, through underwater
mask. The keeper, bugler of moments
before, appears, waving a short flexible switch;
feebly snapping the whip, he herds some two-hundred-odd deer
into deep low pens. . . . Instantaneously, scattered dots
of light, mirrored on the surface
of Sarusawa Pond,

brighten! Whirling about-face, we witness
a spectacle of colorful lanterns:
well-lit octagonals and hexagonals, distributed
everywhere in view, within or without
the park. Of those nearest to us, half are stone lanterns
fastened to shrine walls, benches, or trelliswork. The other half, hung
aloft, metal lanterns suspended from roof eaves or oak limbs,
sway gently in the breeze—rainbow
phantasmagoria overhead!