IN JAPAN 1955

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  • 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.