By Jim Nawrocki
Published in 16.2
Fuji hides, silent now like an empty cricket cage.
veiled by torn-edge clouds, That night, I walk over dark stone
a rain gray sky draped under drizzle as boats drop lanterns
over emergences of green into the canals for the festival,
as I float, dozing, a small galaxy coming to life,
on the train to Matsue. The Romance of the Milky Way.
It rains It rains
as I look from my ryokan window when I climb to grand Matsue castle
to a clump of trees on the Ohashigawa, above the trees, and later, down the hill,
the landing where Lafcadio Hearn through a torii on my last day,
first stepped out, the bridge he crossed passing row after row of Inari,
ages ago, to get here. each one’s face, smoothed
I study by a century or more
remnants through museum glass: of the earth’s eternal water,
Hearn’s suitcase, hat, a comb, pipes,
palimpsest pages spread open by time
with the ink he wove through notebooks at its steady work of erasure.
in this new language of signs.
I stand
stupidly, in front of his desk,
a replica, absent any mark of him,
and turn to take in what was once his view,
walls of doors open to his garden,
open also to loneliness, this room
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