Ukiyo

Lyrics

Sumi ink on the stone.
The smell of wet cherry wood.
A world is waiting to be born from a knife's edge.

Utamaro's hands, they don't shake.
He carves the line of a neck, exposed and pale.
From the Yoshiwara district, a face he half-remembers.
He gives her a kimono of impossible silk,
a smile that knows nothing of the morning.
He is carving a ghost.
A perfect, fleeting thing for the merchants to own.

This is the floating world.
Ukiyo.
A wave of Prussian blue, just arrived on a Dutch ship.
The beauty of the moment you know you cannot hold.
The laughter over sake, the brief flare of a firework over the Ryogoku Bridge.
We don't try to keep it.
We just let it float.

The printer presses the paper down.
Her lips are now red. Her eyes, a line of charcoal.
The background fills with the suggestion of a party.
The sound of a shamisen you can almost hear.
A world of pleasure, just for a moment.
Printed on cheap paper.
Made to be seen, and then to fade.

This is the floating world.
Ukiyo.
A wave of Prussian blue, just arrived on a Dutch ship.
The beauty of the moment you know you cannot hold.
The laughter over sake, the brief flare of a firework over the Ryogoku Bridge.
We don't try to keep it.
We just let it float.

But the print doesn't show the cold draft in the teahouse.
It doesn't tell you her name.
It doesn't show the debt she owes, or the child she misses.
This perfect face is a beautiful lie.
A wrinkle in the silk, smoothed out by the woodblock.
A story told by leaving out the words.
The sad world, hidden so the floating world can breathe.

The print dries on a bamboo rack.
One of a hundred copies.
Tomorrow, maybe it wraps a porcelain bowl for export.
Floats across the ocean.
Unwrapped in Paris.
A forgotten face, from a world that has already vanished.