Japan
By Billy Collins
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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