Published in Overland Issue 245 Summer 2021 · Poetry Traveller Corey Wakeling after two formerly inconsecutive lines by Nishiwaki Junzaburō 詩のないところに詩がある うつつは淋しい Poetry is where poetry is not Reality is lonesome A comrade made of new-cut pine sitting rooms, because of foxed pages and clamorous awnings, warm dregs improved by salt plum —the breakfast nightingale has only commendations, and hangovers, even if Berlin remains what you’re barricaded from. Fantasy traveller, forget the temperate gauge—dispatch the claws of a hundred skunk cabbage, we do better breathlessly and undistracted at work in reassembly, limiting our confinement to enclosure and saké, even if Osaka remains beyond the territorial coordinate. Typhoon #10 had my name on it, not yours! By the southern mountainside at Yakushima, we calculate three families of grey macaque. Karatani made the transition to historian, so should you, even if the only gallery for it all becomes the Met. Reality is lonesome in poetry, illusory in fine gardening. We take up your challenge of establishing gigantic pine between two detachments. Fish in the storm drain, because you can. When the double-flowered cherry sheds, celebrate—even if spring threatens to return again. Read the rest of Overland 245 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive Corey Wakeling Corey Wakeling is a poet and critic living in Takarazuka, Japan. His second full-length collection of poems is The Alarming Conservatory (Giramondo, 2018). More by Corey Wakeling › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 8 September 202312 September 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Games Heather Taylor-Johnson Days pinch and lately I’ve noticed every time I look in the mirror I’m squinting—maybe it’s a grimace. Without trying I’ve mastered the façade of a Besser block threatened by a mallet, by which I mean maybe the world won’t kill me but it’ll definitely hurt and I’ve got to be ready. First published in Overland Issue 228 31 August 20236 September 2023 · Poetry Verbing the apocalypse: Alison Croggon’s Rilke Josie/Jocelyn Suzanne ‘This again?’ and ‘why now? Why not years ago?’ are the two questions raised in each new translation of a non-English piece of Western Canon. There’s an understanding—of course a poetic cycle like the Duino Elegies is incomplete in English, there are endless new readings—and a simultaneous sense of wounded pride/suspicion: what was missing the last time around? What were you concealing from me? What are you concealing now?