Japan

 Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.


It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.


I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.


I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.

I say it in front of a painting of the sea.

I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.


I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.


And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.


It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.


When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.


When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.


And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

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