In twenty twenty-eight,
light narrows, ink falls silent in the streets.
Words shaved of edges, poetry a lost shape,
a forgotten voice in fog.
But Hosokawa Yusai knew this hunger,
guarded songs like embers,
each syllable a blade kept close, hidden,
awaiting flame.
Now, they crush every word,
crack open Petrarch, Li Bai, Lorca under the lights,
bleach each line for signs of breath.
They would smother that half-lit room
where poetry lifts like dawn’s thin edge.
For without verse, only one eye remains,
the gaze that won’t bend,
that sees only forward, only light stripped of shade.
Guard it, keep it—
like smuggled silk, folded into dark hands,
the last color in a drained world.
For if poetry dies, so does the turning,
the room behind sight, the depth of gaze,
and one by one, voices fall to soil.
And so in twenty twenty-eight, we bury it,
carefully as Hosokawa did,
the soft murmur of an unseen world
pressed close to the chest,
a pulse of rebellion waiting.
