Today I pass the time reading <br />a favorite haiku, <br />saying the few words over and over. <br /> <br />It feels like eating <br />the same small, perfect grape <br />again and again. <br /> <br />I walk through the house reciting it <br />and leave its letters falling <br />through the air of every room. <br /> <br />I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. <br />I say it in front of a painting of the sea. <br />I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. <br /> <br />I listen to myself saying it, <br />then I say it without listening, <br />then I hear it without saying it. <br /> <br />And when the dog looks up at me, <br />I kneel down on the floor <br />and whisper it into each of his long white ears. <br /> <br />It's the one about the one-ton temple bell <br />with the moth sleeping on its surface, <br /> <br />and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating <br />pressure of the moth <br />on the surface of the iron bell. <br /> <br />When I say it at the window, <br />the bell is the world <br />and I am the moth resting there. <br /> <br />When I say it at the mirror, <br />I am the heavy bell <br />and the moth is life with its papery wings. <br /> <br />And later, when I say it to you in the dark, <br />you are the bell, <br />and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you, <br /> <br />and the moth has flown <br />from its line <br />and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.<br /><br />Billy Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/japan/
