Today I pass the time reading 
a favorite haiku, 
saying the few words over and over. 

It feels like eating 
the same small, perfect grape 
again and again. 

I walk through the house reciting it 
and leave its letters falling 
through 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 floor 
and whisper it into each of his long white ears. 

It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell 
with the moth sleeping on its surface, 

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating 
pressure of the moth 
on the surface of the iron bell. 

When I say it at the window, 
the bell is the world 
and I am the moth resting there. 

When I say it at the mirror, 
I am the heavy bell 
and 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 flown 
from its line 
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

Japan, Billy Collins

It was a face which darkness could kill
				  in an instant
a face as easily hurt
		    by laughter or light

  'We think differently at night'
				  she told me once
lying back languidly

		   And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
				'whom I am constantly shocking'

  Then she would smile and look away 
	light a cigarette for me
				sigh and rise

and stretch
	her sweet anatomy

		       let fall a stocking