background image
the white boat 69
in the folds of the thin curtains, and
it is a half moon in the clear night.
Well, moon, enough of these
that your Yoshitoshi, who left us
a hundred moon-prints, started
me up on. You don't mesh with our
calendar or clock, or day
or month or year, you claim
your own month -- mooneth -- with its
bunch of ill-fi tting moon
numbers, 29 (days), 12 (hours),
44 (minutes), and tonight you are
complete, O smooth one, and in
that matchless silence you
command, how you keep
perfect now at your maximum
brightness that delicate, clean rim,
as of what metal, hammered thin?
some-time-later words
There was once, moon,
for some weeks, something like
an understanding between us,
and a traffi
c in lively,
if slight, considerations.
Then came this bare aftermath.
You were never more, never less
than yourself -- than the moon
I am seeing now up there:
and this distance between us
eventless and vacant -- a part
of that whole experience, now.