Exchange
after a Japanese manner

As it rained all day
all night the rain is falling.
But suppose morning
comes bright, washed things will display
new beauty, a world singing.

Morning did come bright.
Iridescent the cleaned world,
gem-colour-spangled.
And clear, still, diamond-lit
by washed stars is now the night.

Again night’s vaulting
is star-frosted.  And, alone,
a god’s nail-paring,
a silver sliver caught on
western darkness, hangs the moon.

Frosted stars are veiled
in black.  The clean air is thick
suddenly with snow,
blind in a whirl of shadow
whose white glints can build no world.

Under bright sun, whole
the world lies, dazzling, bridal,
incorruptible.
All confusion lost in light
it is ours.  Rejoice in it.

Hush.  Do you not see
whiteness pocked, dissolving in
commonness, muddy?
shimmering light lost again
in grey reversion of rain?

Rain and sun, snow, wind,
weather and season, wheeling
through the melting now
in changing unchanging round,
build the world where we must build.