“No one here likes a wet dog.”

“JapanToday I pass the time readinga favorite haiku,saying the few words over and over.It feels like eatingthe same small, perfect grapeagain and again.I walk through the house reciting itand leave its letters fallingthrough 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 I say it without listening,then I hear it without saying it.And when the dog looks up at me,I kneel down on the floorand whisper it into each of his long white ears.It’s the one about the one-tontemple bellwith the moth sleeping on its surface,and every time I say it, I feel the excruciatingpressure of the mothon the surface of the iron bell.When I say it at the window,the bell is the worldand I am the moth resting there.When I say it into the mirror,I am the heavy belland 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 flownfrom its lineand moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.”

“A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.”

“GraveWhat do you think of my new glassesI asked as I stood under a shade treebefore the joined grave of my parents,and what followed was a long silencethat descended on the rows of the dead and on the fields and the woods beyond, one of the one hundred kinds of silenceaccording to the Chinese belief,each one distinct from the others,but the differences being so faintthat only a few special monks were able to tell them apart.They make you look very scholarly,I heard my mother sayonce I lay down on the groundand pressed an ear into the soft grass.Then I rolled over and pressed my other ear to the ground,the ear my father likes to speak into,but he would say nothing,and I could not find a silenceamong the 100 Chinese silencesthat would fit the one that he createdeven though I was the onewho had just made up the businessof the 100 Chinese silences - the Silence of the Night Boatand the Silence of the Lotus,cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bellonly deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.”

“I could feel the day offering itself to me,and I wanted nothing morethan to be in the moment-but which moment?Not that one, or that one, or that one,”

“The Death of Allegory I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance displaying their capital letters like license plates. Truth cantering on a powerful horse, Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat, Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended, Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall, Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm. They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes. Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator. Valor lies in bed listening to the rain. Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood, and all their props are locked away in a warehouse, hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles. Even if you called them back, there are no places left for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss. The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair. Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies and next to it black binoculars and a money clip, exactly the kind of thing we now prefer, objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case, themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow, an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray. As for the others, the great ideas on horseback and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns, it looks as though they have traveled down that road you see on the final page of storybooks, the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.”

“…(my father) would say nothing,And I could not find a silenceAmong the one hundred Chinese silencesThat would fit the one he createdEven though I was the one Who had just made up the businessOf the one hundred Chinese silences-The Silence of the Night Boat. And the Silence of the Lotus, Cousin to the Silence of the Temple BellOnly deeper and softer…”