he hooked to the body hard
took it well
and loved to fight
had seven in a row and a small fleck
over one eye,
and then he met a kid from Camden
with arms thin as wires —
it was a good one,
the safe lions roared and threw money;
they were both up and down many times,
but he lost that one
and he lost the rematch
in which neither of them fought at all,
hanging on to each other like lovers through the boos,
and now he’ s over at Mike’ s
changing tires and oil and batteries,
Words without much use
now. Unable to remake
the thing. And I thought
what should I think —
followed by: spring light looks
like feathers. (Birds
seemed conveniently
decorous.) What then
does this leave I asked
& was surprised to know
so quickly — that my understanding
of what the light & birds
could not be made to mean
would not detract
from them as they
were. Bound by feathers
(a thought, I will admit,
born of artifice alone)
It needn’ t be tinder, this juncture of the year,
a cigarette second guessed from car to brush.
The woods’ parchment is given
to cracking asunder the first puff of wind.
Yesterday a big sycamore came across First
and Hawthorne and is there yet.
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’ t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
can go to Bible study every Sunday
and swear she’ s still not convinced,
but she likes to be around people who are.
We have the same conversation
every few years — I’ ll ask her if she stops
to admire the perfect leaves
of the Japanese maple
she waters in her backyard,
or tell her how I can gaze for hours
at a desert sky and know this
as divine. Nature, she says,
doesn’ t hold her interest. Not nearly
as much as the greens, pinks, and grays
of a Diebenkorn abstract, or the antique
They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes – only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons – small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
To converse with the greats
by trying their blindfolds on;
to correspond with books
by rewriting them;
to edit holy edicts,
and at the midnight hour
to talk with the clock by tapping a wall
in the solitary confinement of the universe.
What did the Old Doctor do
in a cattle car
riding to Treblinka on the 5th of August
over a few hours of blood flow
over the dirty river of time
I do not know
What did Charon the volunteer do
ferryman without an oar
did he give the children the remains
of his breath
and leave for himself
just the shiver in the bones
I do not know
Did he lie to them for instance
in small numbing
doses
picking from their sweaty heads
the skittish lice of fear
I do not know
The evidence was in and it went to the contrary.
The contrary wound around us rather like a river.
The river reacted, spider-like, tangling up its legs
with other wet parts we thought we knew,
such as creeks and fjords and deltas and such.
A beaver sits on the riverbank watching all of this unfold.
He doesn’ t know what a fjord is, and he doesn’ t care
for other waters, or even other beavers, or the merest
hint of other business, so he removes this evidence.
Is it a weightless pistol —
your hand.
The tail of smoke
like a limitless conversation
risks blooming and death.
The head of a desert.
A blank crawls parallel to lines of combed hair.
A barometer pursued its dream
without even blinking.
A released piglet
pricked up its rose petal ears
and vanished like a star.
Everyone
waits for everyone
on an unknown
but familiar
infinite chessboard.
Translated from the Japanese
