Michio Ito’s Fox & Hawk

Ito ran to a window. He danced. He howled. He cursed the moon, interned in a camp before he was carted on a ship back to Tokyo. Hadn’t he almost died for art the evenings he ate bread soup? If he wished to forget those days & nights dancing in drawing rooms in London, or translating Fenollosa’s notes on Noh, he’d have to unbraid himself from At the Hawk’s Well, & then let go of the Egyptian mask Dulac painted him into — claws, beak, feathers, & legend. Why did that silly boy tell a story about his grandmother weeping when she first saw him dressed in his grandfather’s samurai armor to hold the gaze of Lady Cunard? He was again studying the fox holding a biscuit in his hand, saying, “I went to a great hill in Hampstead & I made my soul into the soul of a fox.” Finally, he would let go of his Europe, & not think of those he loved & taught, Isadora lost. Now, powerless & alone, he dances his ten steps again & again, wanting to know if a hawk could peck the eyes out of a fox.