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After the declaration by emperor to stop the war many people in Tokyo killed themselves, for instance, in front of the imperial palace. But few people knows those facts. Hence you must teach me where you got the news or what sort of book gave you the fact that quite few people knows. To know the fact of our nation’s subjection is not so comfortable but the fact of many people’s spontaneous death gives me more complicated feelings. In the matter of what William Gass said I must describe my feelings. I went to Nagasaki on an educational trip four years ago. I can recollect those serious moment which was given by the beamed materials in the memorial hall. But most youth after the war are indifferent to those nightmares because of our no experience. Surely, I think, those barbarious conducts shouldn’t be forgiven or forgotten at all and we must not close our eyes to the rebombing at any place in this world. In conclusion I may say that most people except sufferers or the like will not have ill feelings toward your country but they will reproach the suffocative fact in history. Where were you when the World War II was over. Please share your experience of the war with me. I’m now interested in the wars concerned with Japan for the past 100 years. If you tell me your reflections I can suspect more seriously. You have abandoned such cursed things as useless? In that war 3 million people were killed on the side of our nation, especially three hundred thousand people by the A-bomb. Over the war between the imperialism and militarism America won a victory. What does this word mean?

Now I lay me down to rest, I pray I pass tomorrow’s test. If I should die before I wake, That’s one less test I’ll have to take.

She never spoke, which made her obvious, the way death makes the air obvious in an empty chair, the way sky compressed between bare branches is more gray or blue, the way a window is more apparent than a wall. She held her silence to her breast like a worn coat, smoke, an armful of roses. Her silence colored the smaller silences that came and went, that other students stood up and filled in. I leaned near the window in my office. She sat on the edge of a chair. Hips rigid, fidgeting while I made my little speech. February light pressed its cold back against the glass, sealing us in. She focused on my lips as I spoke, as if to study how it's done, the sheer mechanics of it: orchestration of jaw and tongue, teeth shifting in tandem, shaping the air. So I stopped, let her silence drift over us, let it sift in like smoke or snow, let its petals settle on my shoulders. I looked outside to the branches of a stripped tree, winter starlings folded in their speckled wings, chilled flames shuddering at the tips. Students wandered across campus as if under water, hands and hair unfurling, their soundless mouths churning— irate or ecstatic, I couldn't tell—ready to burn it all down or break into song. When I looked back her eyes had found the window: tree, students, birds swimming by, mute in their element. It was painful to hear the papery rasp of her folding and unfolding hands, to watch color smudging her neck and temple, branching to mist the delicate rim of one ear. I listened to the air sunder between us, the feverish hush collapse. I could hear her breath—smoke rising from ice. I could see what it cost her to make that leap. What heat it takes for the body to blossom into speech.

The students eat something and then watch the news, a little, then go to sleep. When morning breaks in they find they have not forgotten all: they recall the speckle of words on certain pages of the chapter assigned, a phrase of strange weight from a chapter that was not assigned, and something said almost flippantly by a classmate on the Green which put much of the 18th century into perspective. Noticing themselves at the sink they are aware the hands they wash are the "same" hands as in high school—though the face is different. Arriving in the breakfast hall having hardly felt the transit, they set down their trays on one table; presently, glance at another corner of the space: that was where we mostly sat two years ago, that was where Gerry said what he said about circles, the concept of, and Leonardo da Vinci.

After Leonardo da Vinci 1 The long incision. The incipient voyage from aortic arch to thoracic inlet. Small-particled is the corpuscled city. (Bustling opuscula.) A city of animal electricity. A lowing cycling mass. Calm the cowed heart. Still the browbeating heart. Cool the controversial hearthstone. Let the blade intervene where the divine intersects bovinity. 2 Pour wax into the gate of an ox’s heart. Close the small doors of the heart via a template of hardened wax, a 
temple of vital gases, water with grass seed suspension, glass blown through a cast of calcined gypsum, plaster of Santo Spirito. Spiritous dissection, blood-sooty vapors, the dense dance of the Renaissance counts down a Galenic pulse.Musculo vivicare. Transit the venous. Bypass the 
arterial. Underscore the two-part cantus firmus in heat and motion. (The fixed heart burns slow, spurns fervor.)

She stands as pale as Parian statues stand; Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay, And felt her strength above the Roman sway, And felt the aspic writhing in her hand. Her face is steadfast toward the shadowy land, For dim beyond it looms the light of day; Her feet are steadfast; all the arduous way That foot-track hath not wavered on the sand. She stands there like a beacon thro' the night, A pale clear beacon where the storm-drift is; She stands alone, a wonder deathly white; She stands there patient, nerved with inner might, Indomitable in her feebleness, Her face and will athirst against the light.

Tu Fu, “Thoughts While Traveling at Night” There’s a wind in the grass — Is there here a boat’s mast claiming my lonely night too? I see the stars can’t be called hanged, exactly, just hanging down, not over emptiness, but honest ground, the moon trying the black skin of this river, black corpse    ... But, even plainer — I wonder if these words, my words, will ever bring me fame. I have my age, my injuries. They limit me. I’m like some spook bird I know, solo and roped between where rotting happens and a sky.

I Imperia I saw a plaster hand, on view In sculptor’s studio, set apart... Aspasia’s? Cleopatra’s?... Who? This fragment’s human work of art? Like lily silvered by the dawn, Frozen in kiss of snow, its light Loveliness dazzled me, and shone In poetry of purest white. Though pallid, wan, yet striking, it Spread over velvet, graceful, slender Fingers—delicate, exquisite— Decked thick with rings of weighty splendor. Thumb high, in serpentine-like pose, Arched in a svelte and shapely line, It lay, fine set, like one of those Hands held with proud air Florentine. Did it comb out the sultan’s beard On jeweled caftan? Or, with twirls And twistings, when Don Juan appeared, Play in his lustrous, glistening curls? A courtesan’s? A queen’s? Did this Wrought hand a scepter wield? Which one? The paragon of fleshly bliss? Sovereignty’s beauteous paragon? Doubtless, by little starts and fits, It lit, poised, in its fluttering, On the she-lion croup of its Chimera-dream, caught on the wing; The Empire’s fantasies; bombastic Love of fantastic, sumptuous schemes; Voluptuous frenzies orgiastic; Impossible and futile dreams; Wild tales; poetic escapades Of hashish, Rhine-wine sorcery; Dashing Bohemian cavalcades On steeds unbridled, coursing free... Such are the things the eyes divines In that white book, by Venus written: Blank palm where she has traced the signs One reads, a-tremble, terror-smitten. II Lacenaire Close by, in contrast, lying there, Encushioned, was the severed hand— Pungent-embalmed—of Lacenaire, Assassin and scourge of the land; Curio most depraved! But, though Repulsed, I reached and touched it, still Barely cleansed of its horrors! Oh! That flesh, red-downed and deathly chill! Sallow hand, like a mummy’s wrought, All yellowed, laid-out pharaoh-wise, Spreading its faun-like fingers, taut, As if to seize its tempting prize; Exuding from their tips, an itching Lusting for living flesh and gold, About to writhe, convulsed, and twitching Before their victims, as of old. Vice clawed vile hieroglyph designs Of heinous wrongs—most foul, most fell— In all its wrinkles, all its lines, Signs that the executioner knew well! One see its scabrous deeds large writ In the palm’s bestial creases, and The boiling cauldron scalding it With every crime at sin’s command; Capri’s debauches libertine, Of fleshpot brothels orgy-rife Stained through with blot of blood and wine Like the old Caesar’s blasé life. At once both soft and savage, its Shape shows a curious elegance, A fearsome grace that counterfeits The gladiator’s graceful stance! Crime’s aristocracy! No plane, No hammer’s labors ever made Its flesh tough time and time again! Its only tool, the dagger-blade... Work’s honest calluses! For you We look in vain, no sign we see: Evil’s false poet, butcher true— A Manfred of the gutter, he!

I do. Victim. Sales Met Wipe Her Less. Was a disappointment We say it. Study nature. Or Who Towering. Mispronounced Spelling. She Was Astonishing To No One For Fun Study from nature. I Am Pleased Thoroughly I Am Thoroughly Pleased. By. It. It is very likely. They said so. Oh. I want. To do. What Is Later To Be Refined. By Turning. Of turning around. I will wait.

Leaves flare up, kitchen matches in the permanent trees. Black flash of pike on Mirror Lake, dropping like a roll of nickels. I don’t want nudes in paintings, I don’t want Beauty through the heart, small harpoon that opens when pulled out. I want to break another eggroll with you in moonlight. Ugly maples, when you’re gone.