Kyoto Japan
Two drums, a wooden flute –
A rustle of librettos, stick figures running up & down the page
Single file the chorus enters
sits cross-legged, chanting in unison

Life is a lying dream. He only wakes who casts the World aside

Slowly, oh so slowly a hand appears through a curtain stage left
Then, by an imperceptibility of motion,
a non-motion…
an arm, a body
We wait and wait and wait…
Time slows to the rhythmic beat of the drums
He moves
to center stage, turns to face us,
a white mask dressed in black,
stamps his foot, grunts, growls,
voice rising, rising, rising
“I, Kumagai no Nazane, have left my home to wander,
now call myself the priest Rensei This I have become
after the death of Atsumori, who fell in battle by my hand!”

RICHARD BRONSON is on the Faculty of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care & Bioethics of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. He is a member of the Boards of the Walt Whitman Birthplace and the Long Island Poetry Collective and was Suffolk County Poet Laureate from 2021-2023.