EDIT

We at PITCH are editors as much as makers. If we catch a glint of quality in poems we are sent, occasionally we will attempt to sluice out the dross so as better to expose what good we believe is present. We edit by instinct, not by ideal – which is perhaps foolish, foolhardy. We do not know. Reader, why not judge for yourself?

The bamboo trap

For Ishikawa Jozan, who set a bamboo trap
to keep the deer from his garden
while he was trying to write:

did you not think that the
perfectness of your concentration
might in the end not make up

for the terrible empty sound
of snow falling straight through
everything without landing,

and that it was probably a bad idea
to create a deerless world, then leave
tied up outside it in your dream catcher

all your better halves,
those who might have noticed the snow
and marked it?

This was our first go:

The Bamboo Trap

For Ishikawa Jozan, who set a bamboo trap
to keep the deer out his garden
when he was trying to write:

did you not think that your
perfect concentration
might in the end not make up

for the terrible sound of snow
falling straight
through everywhere without landing

and that probably it was a bad idea
to create a deerless world, then leave
tied up outside it in your dreamcatcher

all your better halves, those who might
have noticed the snow,
marked it?

However we were not happy. We could not settle on a pattern of lineation in the final stanza which satisfied us. We decided, then, that more than tinkering was in order. An editorial overhaul?

JAZON's GARDEN

As clouds crossed the light of the sun;
Ishikawa bent, watched meltwater run
a second, and set his bamboo trap to keep
the deer out when he wrote; the garden
flexed its pelt of snow, sound fell asleep
and Ishikawa waited for his lines to harden,

to pack like fallen snow. Silence rang
loud as flies; as it took his ink the paper sang
though nothing came. He raised his eyes. Outside,
beyond the lantern, like ruins antlers jutted; snow
feathered: it was a stag collapsed. Before it died
it shuddered, bled, its ankle leaked a carmine flow

marking the white ground Ishigawa wrote.

We hope these changes have been improvements; our instincts tell us that they have.