For Takamura Kotaro

When the Bombs fall, and you listen
to the Emperor’s speech
(almost opaquely formal,
about “bearing the unbearable”),
you think again of Chieko –
now seven years dead –
and certain phrases
(perhaps from her feminist, radical youth)
with which, from the roof,
she insulted your neighbors,
or you when she threw pots and pans
(still at home, before the asylum).
And remember how she hated
a certain type of face –
self-righteous, fanatical. Now that face
is gone, lifted. What remains
are the scent of lemons
she wanted at the end,
the lemons you leave on her tomb, and
“the beauty of devastation.”

A certain idiocy is lifted.
The hundreds of poems
you wrote, committees
you chaired, anthologies
of poetry for the war –
what were you thinking?
Not thinking but feeling;
trying, blasphemously, to feel
something other than grief.