ENGL210 – Blog 2: Poem for Mr Miyazaki

Task – Write a short poem in tribute to one of your favourite singers/ actors/ creative artists – in which you compare your “hero” to one of the constellations. 

Author’s Note: Each of Hayao Miyazaki’s images is followed by a stanza of my poem in tribute to him. There are five images. Enjoy!

Link for more information about this fabulous Japanese animator and storyteller: Hayao Miyazaki

There is a comfort in the creatures you create.
…a familiar, long-ago story
of home in the glades
and play in glens
and happiness in streaming, sunlit glory.
Only few, Old Man, can still see like a child.
And the humdrum beat of the dragonfly wing?
You hear, in working-day silence,
its innocence far off in the thrumming wild.
There is a kindly magic in the realms that you build.
In wind and waves…sea foam and zephyr…ebb and flow,
a natural wonder you wind ’round the stars,
and lackadaisal ease in the pale moon’s glow.
You fly us to the sea.
You swim us to the sky.
Oh, the kingdoms you architect with the mere eyes
of a man’s mind.
“ Sophie - Howl’s Moving Castle ”

There is a passion in the people you share;
souls that are soft and gentle,
rounded, fiery and flared.
You know the desires of the old and withered.
You know the wisdoms of the young and naïve.
Love is red-hot, but can also exist
as a cool shade of aquamarine!
Your tales are warming to our hearts,
whose smiles appear with the lives of such typical…
such fairy-fabled human beings.
There is a respect in the stories you tell
and longing to show us our earth as well.
Beyond your colours and pencils and pages,
betwixt these curses and kisses and spells,
a sad sort of worry trickles in from their faces
–a wistful yearning for the past seems to dwell.
There are spectres in the scions you draw,
they splash about the paints as your spirit world spills in;
it gushes with fishtails and folklore.
You–with frail, lead-fraught fingers–ply into the heavens
a warning should the folks in your tales,
with hands fisted in earthlight, fail.
Whilst sketching in the shadow of stars with your millions of tools,
we watch in shards of moonbeam: we insatiable fools.

Works Cited

Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Gake no Ue no Ponyo/Ponyo. Studio
Ghibli, 2008.

Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Hauru No Ugoku Shiro/Howl’s Moving
Castle. Studio Ghibli, 2004.

Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Majo no Takkyūbin/Kiki’s Delivery
Service. Studio Ghibli, 1989.

Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/Spirited
Away. Studio Ghibli, 2001.

Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Tonari no Totoro/My Neighbour Totoro.
Studio Ghibli, 1988.

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