The Circles Were Perfect and That Was the Problem (Hypatia)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You sold
everything you owned
and walked
north
into the interior of Japan
in sandals
in sixteen eighty-nine
because the poems
you were writing
in the city
had started to taste
like dry newsprint
and the poems
you needed
to write next
tasted like
the particular green
of a frog
hitting water
and that green
only existed
on the road.

[Verse 2]
You wrote
seventeen syllables
about a frog
jumping
into a pond
and the seventeen syllables
weighed less
than the frog
and more
than the pond
and the distance
between those two weights
is where
Japanese poetry
has lived
ever since.

[Chorus]
You walked
fifteen hundred miles
and came back
with a notebook
thinner
than the notebooks
you left with
because you had learned
that the poem
gets shorter
every time
the poet
gets closer
to what
the poem
is actually about
and the thing
the poem
was actually about
was the sound
the water made
when the frog
was done
with the air.

[Verse 3]
You died
on the road
because of course
you died
on the road.
The bed
would have been
wrong.
The room
would have been
wrong.
You needed
to die
the way
the frog
needed the water —
mid-jump,
still falling,
the sound
not yet
arrived.

[Outro]
Your last poem
was about
a dream
wandering
over a dry field
and the dream
had the texture
of a heavy linen
left too long
in the sun
and the field
had no opinion
about the dream
and the dream
had no opinion
about the dying
and neither
did you.

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