We Must Unlearn The Constellations To See

You Will Love Again, People Say. Give It Time. Me With Time Running Out. Day After Day Of The Everyday. What They Call Real Life, Made Of Eighth-inch Gauge. Newness Strutting Around As If It Were Significant. Irony, Neatness And Rhyme Pretending To Be Poetry. I Want To Go Back To That Time After Michiko's Death When I Cried Every Day Among The Trees. To The Real. To The Magnitude Of Pain, Of Being That Much Alive.

We Must Have The Stubbornness To Accept Our Gladness In The Ruthless Furnace Of This World.

Question The Bravery. Say It's Not Courage. Call It A Passion.

We Think The Fire Eats The Wood. We Are Wrong. The Wood Reaches Out To The Flame. The Fire Licks At What The Wood Harbors, And The Wood Gives Itself Away To That Intimacy, The Manner In Which We And The World Meet Each New Day.

Are The Angels Of Her Bed The Angels Who Come Near Me Alone In Mine? Are The Green Trees In Her Window The Color Is See In Ripe Plums? If She Always Sees Backward And Upside Down Without Knowing It What Chance Do We Have? I Am Haunted By The Feeling That She Is Saying Melting Lords Of Death, Avalanches, Rivers And Moments Of Passing Through, And I Am Replying, "yes, Yes. Shoes And Pudding.