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In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past? That holy dream—that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding. What though that light, thro' storm and night, So trembled from afar— What could there be more purely bright In Truth's day-star?

People traveled from miles away to see my paintings of fish— the jeweled armor of their scales, the beadlike set of their eyes in rubbery socket rings, the glimmering swish of fin and tail so real it seemed that you could almost dip a net deep into the paper and pull up the arching wet weight of a golden carp, a shiny trout, or the dark muscular heft of a bass with its mouth stretched into the surprised, wiry “oh” of a child’s wind sock. I captured my models from the sea, lake, and goldfish pond in the back garden, so careful not to let their mouths be torn by the hook, their scales chipped, or the silky tissue of their tails ripped by a clumsy hand. I kept them in large glass bowls, fed them mosquito wings or dry silkworm pupas offered from chopsticks, and when I was finished making sketches, I quickly took them back and set them free again. Every night I dream I swim with these fish as a golden carp—black spots on cloisonné scales, pulled to the surface by the deceptive creamy luster of the moon or the sizzle of firefly lights across the water. And every night I am tempted once again by the smell of the baited hook, by my predictable hunger for earthly things, and each time I am surprised again by the stinging hook in my lip that pulls me mercilessly into the bright air, setting my gills on fire, the sharp, silver pain of the knife that slits me open so easily from tail to throat to reveal the scarlet elastic of my raw gills, the translucent film of my air sac, the milky rise of my stomach, and the gray marbled coil of my intestines. I rise late each day, and work in brighter light. When I die, I will have my paintings brought down to the lake and slipped into the water. First the edges of ink will blur, and then there will be a great flurry as the fins, tails, and bodies begin blossoming in- to life again, each fish detaching from its canvas of silk or rice paper—a swirl of color, motion, swimming away.

Where sunless rivers weep Their waves into the deep, She sleeps a charmed sleep: Awake her not. Led by a single star, She came from very far To seek where shadows are Her pleasant lot. She left the rosy morn, She left the fields of corn, For twilight cold and lorn And water springs. Through sleep, as through a veil, She sees the sky look pale, And hears the nightingale That sadly sings. Rest, rest, a perfect rest Shed over brow and breast; Her face is toward the west, The purple land. She cannot see the grain Ripening on hill and plain; She cannot feel the rain Upon her hand. Rest, rest, for evermore Upon a mossy shore; Rest, rest at the heart's core Till time shall cease: Sleep that no pain shall wake; Night that no morn shall break Till joy shall overtake Her perfect peace.

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named N IGHT , On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of S PACE —Out of T IME . Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters—lone and dead,— Their still waters—still and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily. By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily,— By the mountains—near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,— By the grey woods,—by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp,— By the dismal tarns and pools Where dwell the Ghouls,— By each spot the most unholy— In each nook most melancholy,— There the traveller meets, aghast, Sheeted Memories of the Past— Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by— White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven. For the heart whose woes are legion ’T is a peaceful, soothing region— For the spirit that walks in shadow ’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado! But the traveller, travelling through it, May not—dare not openly view it; Never its mysteries are exposed To the weak human eye unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid The uplifting of the fring'd lid; And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses. By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named N IGHT , On a black throne reigns upright, I have wandered home but newly From this ultimate dim Thule.

Without the sun filtered through closed eyelids, without the siren along the service road, without Grandpa’s ginger-colored hair, Mother’s lipstick, Daughter’s manicure, firecrackers, a monkey’s ass, a cherry, Rei’s lost elephant, without communist or past tense, or a character seeing her own chopped-off feet dancing in fairy slippers, or Mao’s favorite novel about a chamber — the scientist of sleep has claimed that without warm blood a creature cannot dream.

I wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents Japanese — like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone though my braid was lopped off long ago, like an overpowering pine incense or a talisman from a Kyoto shrine, like a Hello Kitty diary-lock-and-key, Hello Kitty stickers or candies, a netsuke in the shape of an octopus, ticket stubs from the Bunraku — or am I wishing for Mother? searching for Sister? just hoping to give something Japanese to my daughters? then again, people can read anything into dreams and I do as well. I wish I possessed my mother’s black lacquer box though in my dream it was red, though I wish my heart were content.

Benedicite! whate dreamed I this nyght? Methought the worlde was turnyd up so downe The sun, the moone had lost their force and lyght, The sea also drowned both toure and towne. Yet more marvel how that I heard the sounde Of onys voice saying: beare in thy mynd, Thi lady hath forgotten to be kynd.

I In the moonlight, in the heavy snow, I was hunting along the sunken road and heard behind me the quiet step and smothered whimper of something following . . . Ah, tree of panic I climbed to escape the night, as the furry body glided beneath, lynx with steady gaze, and began the slow ascent. II And dark blue foxes climbed beside me with famished eyes that glowed in the shadows; I stabbed with a sharpened stick until one lay across the path with entrails spilled, and the others melted away. The dead fox moved again, his jaws released the sound of speech. III Slowly I toiled up the rotting stairs to the cemetery where my mother lay buried, to find the open grave with the coffin tilted beside it, and something spilled from the bottom— a whiteness that flowed on the ground and froze into mist that enveloped the world.

In prayer: quiet opening, my artery is a thin shadow on paper— margin of long grass, ruderal hair, sister to this not yet part of our bodies your lyric corpus of seed in rough drafts of pine ash, chaogao or grass calligraphy in rough drafts of pine ash— your lyric corpus of seed not yet part of our bodies: ruderal hair, sister to this margin of long grass, shadow on paper, my artery is a thin quiet opening in prayer.

I  Self-Portrait A house with three stories. In the basement, monsters. The upper floors were empty. No furniture, nothing. I had a magic pebble that I needed to hide. But where? Woke in a room with the bed breathing. Each day the same scandal—this body. These teeth and hands. 2  The Miniature Bed A miniature bed, and in it two tiny people not sleeping, not able to sleep because a small lie has flowered between them, fragile as a new, white crocus. The miniature bed holds them like a miniature boat making its slow, true course to morning. These tiny people, thoughts thrumming like mice, are quiet as the lie blooms over them in the night, fanning its moth petals, becoming to them like a moon hovering over their bed, a moon they might almost touch with their miniature hands, if they weren't certain that one wrong gesture might break the spindles of their small world, if their hearts were not drops of trembling quicksilver, if they were brave, if they could see that small is no smaller than big, that thimbles are deep as oceans for any god, they might even touch each other then, opening the dark, like a match, the sun's flaring. 3  Harvest The fields are a book of uses. Near the house a combine takes the corn down in long rows. Dust rises up and replaces itself. A quick net of starlings drops to the furrows and sunshine pours like polished grain onto the feeding earth, this country. In the kitchen, milk streams from the gallon thin and fresh as luck. We flourish. All around us, things flourish. Cows strain the fence with their abundance. The herd makes a sound like swelling. Out in the cut field birds clean the fallen cobs into sets of teeth. 4  Sonnet for Lost Teeth The combines were tearing off the field’s clothes. It was August, haying season. My tooth was loose, a snag in the clam of my mouth. I worked it like a pearl. I'd been out of school for sixty days. In the sweat of the barn I watched him shoot the calf in the head. He wiped the hide gently, like cleaning his glasses. Overnight, I grew a beard so I wouldn't have to get married. I let my feet go black from burned grasses.It never gets easier he said, kicking straw over the blood patch. She went down so quiet it was almost sad. Later, when my tooth fell out, I buried it under my pillow and it grew into money. 5  Talisman Waiting for the school bus you find the femur of a baby animal on the ground. You carry that femur in your pocket the entire morning and touch it secretly through the cloth. When the teacher asks a question you don't raise your hand but quietly wrap your fingers around the thin shape, that bone without a mother. 6  On Waking Half of everything is invisible. A river drifts below the river. A gesture lost in the body. Wind moves through the open windows of the trees. Beyond the day, another day. Dreamed I was drowning my mother's silk laundry in the river, kneeling on the wet rocks. Back and forth I drowned it in the gray clouds... 7  Eros Each year fish run the green vein of the river. The bones of skunks lie buried in the riverbank upside down, waiting for rain. From a fragment of a Greek statue you can tell the posture of the whole god. A skeleton has the same intelligence. So that when a girl discovers it, loosened by summer rain, surfaced like a white instrument in the grass, she suddenly knows how to take it up and shake the strange rhythms from it like castanets. 8  A Childhood The horse had been beaten and flies crawled excited on the beat marks. He held still in the sunblazed pasture. For a few minutes I stood at the wire fence. He was aware of me, but he did not turn— except his eye, slightly. He listened through the many ears of the grasses. A jay made a hole in the air with its cry. Everywhere, invisible as heat, the gods married each other and went to war. The excitement of it vibrated in the flies. As if we both were standing still inside some greater, more violent motion.