I wish my mind were a Japanese room:

light-filled, profound in its simplicity.

Along its four walls, shelves of white oak

with meticulous stacks of everything

I ever knew arranged by times and subjects,

open to the air, easily accessible.

But my mind is a cavernous, old barn

located in some remote place, filled

with ersatz antiques, sour smell of rot.

Gold-tasseled drapes drip over piles

of photo albums, each page an oval frame

into which photographs can be inserted.

But in these, the photos are all missing.

If I could walk into my Japanese room,

I would find in which Duino Elegy

Rilke speaks of the cosmos needing us

to speak, to bear witness, to name things.

Here is the sayable. But in my barn

I can’t even find where I put my secrets.