The Two Young Men From Japan<\/p>\n
To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of \u201cOrb Weavers have hooped a white gauze across sixty acres,\u201d The two young men from Japan are still laughing at the bus shelter. Parkas in cold Polish twilight, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Michael Daley was born in Boston and lives in Anacortes. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts and has an MFA from the University of Washington. In 1983 he published his first collection of poetry, The Straits.<\/em> His chapbooks include Angels, Original Sin, Horace: Eleven Odes, The Corn Maiden,<\/em> and Rosehip Plum Cherry. <\/em>His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Alaskan Quarterly Review, Raven Chronicles, Seattle Review, <\/em>on the Writer\u2019s Almanac <\/a><\/em>and forthcoming in The North American Review.<\/em> In 2007 he published Way Out There: Lyrical Essays. <\/a><\/em>In 2008 To Curve <\/a><\/em>came out and in early 2010 Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest<\/a><\/em> with a CD of poems and music arranged and performed by Brad Killion. “The Two Young Men From Japan” is from Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Two Young Men From Japan To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. \u2014Eric Hoffer \u201cOrb Weavers have hooped a white gauze across sixty acres,\u201d a … Continue reading
\nfamiliarity spread over the whole of eternity.
\n\u2014Eric Hoffer<\/em><\/p>\n
\na winter\u2019s worth snag of less patient species, a community,
\nthe historic web by dawn radiant in the east
\nsnares the setting sun.
\nI read it in the paper someone left at the cafeteria.
\nThe door wheezes behind me as I step back into Poland,
\nto see the name \u201cOswiecim\u201d is liberating
\nfor its pure municipal indifference.<\/p>\n
\nThey know me by my trudge, mud falling away,
\nhead bowed under the ice of Auschwitz;
\nmy boots announce to the gravel
\na reverent tourist unlike them, giggling in a storm.
\nThey await the bus to Krakow.
\nI always remember them,
\nhave often wished I\u2019d shrugged off
\na silence my mind found
\nin the hours since losing my guide
\nwhen I wandered the death camp,
\nacres of chimneys in the cold.
\n\u201cOh, you\u2019re from Seattle?\u201d
\nStrange to hear home sound so foreign.
\n\u201cIchiro!\u201d We laugh. We talk a little baseball.
\nHow happy we are safe beyond history.
\nWe laugh at anything\u2014
\nold shoes suitcases spectacles dolls in mounds
\nindignant faces on our zlotys bus fare\u2014that\u2019s funny.
\nEmbarrassed by the length of an English sentence:
\n\u201cWe\u2026 Are\u2026Touring \u2026 Camps, All the Camps.\u201d
\nModest laughter
\nMore camps than mine, my list only this.
\n\u201cDachau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Buchenau.\u201d Wan smile.
\nThey have traveled three months, both born in Nagasaki.<\/p>\n
\nwe made our getaway from Auschwitz laughing.
\nMy bus window black with February,
\nI scribbled in my notebook, grim and private.
\nThey went on back there, they cackled all along the route,
\ntheir choppy map a line of stations on whose sleepers
\nthey never slept, those intoxicated laughers
\nsprung from turf slabbed by monuments to the frisky dead.
\nI can\u2019t forget them, how happy they were.
\nPerhaps it bothers me\u2014why I write this now\u2014
\nto hear them laugh again, to know
\nthey never came to an end of camps,
\nI wasn\u2019t the only pilgrim on the bus.<\/p>\n