David Mitchell: A Poem By . . .

David Mitchell

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Here below, from David Mitchell's novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel, is a poem proving that a semicolon need not be "the least-used mark of punctuation in all of poetry," despite Mary Ruefle (Madness, Rack and Honey, page 4), for Mitchell's poem uses 64 of them:

From the Veranda of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, at the Magistracy

Gulls wheel
through spokes
of sun-
light
over gracious
roofs
and dowdy
thatch,
snatch-
ing entrails
at the market-
place and
escaping
over cloistered
gardens,
spike-
topped
walls and
treble-
bolted doors.

Gulls alight
on white-
washed
gables,
creaking
pagodas
and dung-
ripe
stables;
circle over
towers
and caver-
nous bells
and over
hidden
squares
where
urns
of urine
sit
by covered
wells,
watched
by mule-
drivers,
mules
and wolf-
snouted dogs,
ignored by hunch-
backed makers
of clogs;
gather
speed up
the stoned-
in Naka-
shima
River
and fly
beneath
the arches
of its bridges,
glimpsed
from kitchen doors,
watched
by farmers
walking high,
stony ridges.

Gulls fly
through clouds
of steam
from laundries' vats;
over kites un-
threading
corpses of cats;
over scholars
glimpsing
truth
in fragile
patterns;
over bath-
house
adult-
erers,
heart-
broken
slatterns;
fish-
wives
dismembering
lobsters
and crabs;
their husbands
gutting
mackerel
on slabs;
wood-
cutters'
sons
sharpening
axes;
candle-
makers
rolling
waxes;
flint-
eyed officials
milking
taxes;
etiolated
lacquer-
ers;
mottle-
skinned
dyers;
imprecise
sooth-
sayers;
unblinking
liars;
weavers
of mats;
cutters
of rushes;
ink-lipped
calli-
graphers
dipping
brushes;
booksellers
ruined
by unsold
books;
ladies-
in-waiting;
tasters;
dressers;
filching
page-boys;
runny-nosed
cooks;
sunless attic
nooks
where seam-
stresses prick
calloused fingers;
limping
malingerers;
swineherds;
swindlers;
lip-chewed debtors
rich
in excuses;
heard-it-all creditors
tighten-
ing nooses;
prisoners
haunted
by happier
lives
and age-
ing rakes
by other
men's wives;
skeletal tutors
goaded to fits;
firemen-
turned-looters
when occasion
permits;
tongue-tied
witnesses;
purchased
judges;
mothers-in-law
nurturing
briars
and grudges;
apothecaries
grinding
powders
with mortars;
palanquins
carrying
not-yet-
wed daughters;
silent nuns;
nine-year-old
whores;
the once-were-
beautiful
gnawed by sores;
statues of Jiz-
o
anointed
with posies;
syphilitics sneez-
ing
through rotted
-off noses;
potters;
barbers;
hawkers
of oil;
tanners;
cutlers;
carters
of night-
soil;
gate-keepers;
bee-keepers;
blacksmiths
and drapers;
torturers;
wet-nurses;
perjurers;
cut-purses;
the newborn;
the growing;
the strong-
willed
and pliant;
the ailing;
the dying;
the weak
and defiant;
over the roof
of a painter
with-
drawn
first
from the world,
then
his family,
and down
into a master-
piece that has,
in the end,
with-
drawn
from its creator;
and around
again,
where their flight
began,
over the balcony
of the Room
of the Last
Chrysan-
themum,
where
a puddle
from
last night's
rain is evapor-
ating;
a puddle
in which
Magis-
trate
Shiro-
yama
observes
the blurred
reflections
of gulls
wheeling
through spokes
of sunlight.

This world,
he thinks,
contains
just one master-
piece,
and that is
itself.

I suppose that's a prose poem by Mitchell because it originally had no line breaks, so you might break it up differently, for it's comprised of a single paragraph with four sentences stretching from page 451 to 452.

Mary Ruefle writes in Madness, Rack and Honey that:

[W]e each only really speak one sentence in our lifetime. That sentence begins with your first words, toddling around the kitchen, and ends with your last words . . . in a nursing home, the night-duty attendant vaguely on hand. Or, if you are blessed, they are heard by someone who knows you and loves you and will be sorry to hear the sentence end. (page 4)

Magistrate Shiroyama is about to speak the final phrase of his lifelong sentence . . .