Oh sadness. I feel it in my bones, deep in the blue-black grooves of the dark gleaming leaves. Red embers glow and the merry full moon extends its arms, while the dangerous white cloud departs and the black cloud sticks its tongue out. Smoke and immense animal bodies roil in the ravines, and everything drips with silver dew.
Are they angels? No, they are fairies, flying by with bright thighs, grazing the bushes. I shiver in the morning cold, and I wonder what lies beyond the clouds. I imagine a place where the swallow’s wing opens a wavelike trough in the goddess’s hair, and green lights flicker in the forest.
But now it is night, and wicked shrews whack the goblins. The wheels have stopped turning, and the darkness knows itself not. It is a fist within a fist, seen by no one.
So I throw all the stones behind me and let fall the walls. I am the first guest come through, and I gut my mushrooms for a hundred singers above. For you, against you, I let fall the walls and surrender to the hooves that tear loose.
Oh sadness, it is a feeling that is all too familiar. But I take solace in the beauty of nature and the mysteries of the night sky.
