Japan by Billy Collins

A Tobacco Moth, having supper at my Moonflower last summer.

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 the 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 into 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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***Haiku by the Japanese poet and painter Buson (1715 - 1783): 

"On the one-ton temple bell
A moon-moth, folded into sleep,
sits still."

(Translated by X. J. Kennedy)

From:  "The Norton Anthology of Poetry", page 1190

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It's storming here in the swamps of my Louisiana.  Glorious shiny sheets of shimmering rain (I dare you to say that 3 times, really fast) are covering my world.  The drought is officially over.  I'm headed to my favorite cozy chair to read poetry, drink coffee and then read some more.  Oh, happy day!  :-)

xoxo,
~Marion


"An ordinary man can... surround himself with two thousand books... and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy." ~Augustine Birrell
 
 
"Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh." ~Judah Ibn Tibbon