- A balcony over a beach on the Inland Sea,
- artful night waters sometimes painting
- hulls and wakes with eerie iridescence,
- sometimes roaring back to hurl
- typhoon-blackened waves over the roof.
- .
- Instant conspicuousness
- all the wrong colors
- in a world of gleaming
- black hair and eyes.
- Instant illiteracy,
- left with only mimed
- communication,
- dependent on the kindness
- of a defeated enemy.
- .
- “Our men are dead,”
- the explanation by the
- thirty-year-old for
- why she is picking
- up after us instead of
- the children she will
- never have.
- .
- “Please describe your country,”
- my students ask, eager
- to know about our schools,
- our families, about how our
- cities work and what we eat
- for dinner. There is some
- secret for superiority to be found
- for why the so long triumphant
- have been vanquished.
- It cannot be luck—the best win.
- They always have.
- .
- Earth, man, heaven, the order of flowers,
- each stem handled with sensuous respect.
- A tapered brush dipped in handmade
- ink and moved swiftly across soft paper.
- A tunnel made of scarlet maples,
- overhead, underfoot.
- In the opposite season,
- pale blossoms float and swirl around us.
- In summer, a soft sail to Awaji, steaming baths,
- crisp robes and magical puppeteers.
- In winter, toes warm under heated futons
- in a lodge of paper ringed by snow drifts,
- one exquisite scroll on a bare cloth wall.
- .
- We await some match here
- for the Japs in the films,
- for the Nips in the posters,
- some account-due hurled
- at us for their terrible losses.
- But there are no dark waves.
- only curiosity, courtesy,
- and the gentle making of art.
