A View of Japan

These horned islands that the possing seas
Rake and rumple to their dragonish end
Are muscled with mountains, light
With lakes where long, vermilion bridges bench.

The leaning pines of ravaged bays extend
Such male, inventive headlands, cocked
At the salty tip like temple roofs:
Hilltops are tiled with knotted water plots.

Hokkaido, tufted devilfish in ragged rockS,
Honshu, rough-spined, vigorous eel,
Shikoku, a ribbed and plated crab, and green
Kyushu, sea horse on a capering keel.

Medieval monsters, sea chevaliers in scaly mail,
They thresh in the pale-jade foam of atlases, and toss,
Like poems, the rich ejaculations of the lesser isles,
Carelessly work and wanton, energetic, handy boys.

These crusted urchins leap with antic noise.
Eloquently silent, the sea displays them like a fan
Of paper, blossomed with the spuming earth —
The neat, tremendous garden of Japan.