"Midsummer"
Bashô says the body is composed of one hundred bones and nine openings.
Within which flimsy structure the spirit dwells.
Floating by the park at dusk, through the heavy trees,
the white building glides like a ship.
An amber lamp is lit in a top-floor window
and a woman in her robe is leaning on the sill, eyes closed to the sunset.
A violet shadow is pouring down the side of the building from her long hair.
Two pigeons are perched in the next window, against a black room.
Beyond the trees, down a rough slope, the river is winding
around the island, flowing into the sea.
Slowly the mist off the river coils around the building, concealing it.
And just as slowly it lifts.
Only now the woman's lamp is extinguished.
Her window remains open, the curtain flutters,
but there is no sign of her, laid down to sleep in the darkness—
her pale body with its one hundred bones and nine openings
from which the spirit will one day slip, like the mist seeping
back through the trees, along the river, out to sea.
-- Nicholas Christopher
