The Twenty-First Century

56 | Jacob Eigen In those days, Japanese restaurants placed tanks of fake, magnetic fish in their vestibules. We would sit at the counter saying I love so-­ a nd-­ s o but live with so-­ a nd-­ s o-­ s omeone-­ e lse, and the waiter folding napkins at the corner table would look up from his work and say: if you please, see the fish—the way they approach one side of the tank and then the other, turning and turning in a way that makes us feel they’re alive. But he would say this in Japanese, which at that time we heard as a sequence of meaningless syllables. Because it would be many years until the distinction between all languages was erased. And for us, many bowls of clouded broth. The Twenty-­ F irst Century Jacob Eigen poetry ...