Someday to Fuji.

SOMEDAY TO FUJI

   Let's someday fly to Fuji's isle.
   I'll wear a knee-length, knotted gown
   of crepe in blues and periwinkles
   with you blase in brown.

   The foreign tongue will be a thing
   I've neither studied nor discussed
   with you. You'll speak it fluently,
   and I will need to trust

   your judgment in hotel and market
   for bargaining, respect, and bread--
   a fair price for a silken fan,
   a maid to make the bed.

   Nowhere is there a local ridge
   I've wished to climb or photograph.
   Their scales and shapes seem cause
   to wince,
   their legends cause to laugh;

   their levels, by comparison
   with rises I cannot attain
   inferior, somehow--their flora,
   gauche,
   their beauty, plain.

   But Fuji, with its strange
   profoundness,
   mythology, cognition, mist,
   lies far--like love which must be kept
   exotic to exist.