Not At All

I am aware that the number of labels on this website marked 'Music' are gradually surging ahead of those marked 'Poems'. It wasn't intended to be like that but I don't write very many poems, let alone good ones, or ones that I necessarily think ought to be exhibited here, ostensibly advertising my presence to the world as, ahem, a 'poet', as absurd as that seems to me.
Nonetheless, 'Poems' need to make up some of the deficit.
My Japanese correspondant writes the most beautiful e-mails you'd ever want to receive.

Not at All

I am sorry for say such a foolish things.
Yuka Watanabe

Just after daybreak your e-mail arrived
from a summer afternoon in Japan.
You think your English is badly contrived,
Will I understand? Well, of course I can.
In fact, if anything, it says much more
for all the effort that you have put in,
more moving and more beautiful. Therefore,
your English writing doesn’t only pin

your meaning to the page but brings with it
a sense of Yuka from so far away.
And here am I, almost monoglot Brit,
who knows shogun, sake, kamikaze
but no more than that of your language. Please.
I couldn’t write to you in Japanese.