Moscú está helado—Moscú está helado— (Spain 1981, dark backward and abysm of time)
Winter fields all around Madison, stubbly, ice-rimmed. Deer among bare branches at the frozen pond. Yuki 雪, snow, and tsuki 月, moon, only appear to rhyme in the Roman alphabet. In his admiration for the winter moon Genji was singular. We flew out in a blizzard.
Started the year too sick to hold on to much, walked through the world as if through a garden, pausing at sprays of color without picking them, not mine to take. If I’d been well enough to go the zendo I would have tried to toss despair in the bonfire. A. in Madison, describing a bit of gambler’s theater she’s cooked up in which strangers are invited to wager away some part of themselves they’d be rid of, at least ambivalently. My fear of birds, a woman says. Fear of... birds? Is there an advantage to that? Well, she says, it is educational, I’ve learned a lot about birds.
