Japan, Billy Collins

Japan

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 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 its 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. 

--- Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning