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| 15 | RONIN OF THE IMPERIAL MOAT | 2 Ronin of the Imperial Moat Ronin is my name, as you know, and he has no parents to bear his stories, no memorable contours, creases, or manner of silence at night. My name is wild, a nuclear orphan, a samurai warrior without a master to exact my loyalty. My parents are shadows. That me of creation is the face of the other, the virtual you by my absence, and now we come to the same aesthetic vengeance of pronoun closures. You never had a calendar of promises, or cultural service, nothing to remember by the sanguinary rights of way. My father, the touch of you is mythic, the tease of our nature is forever in my story. My parents might have posed for me in that photograph, the only trace of their romance and my conception. My father is set in his uniform, a sergeant and interpreter for the occupation army. He could have been an actor in the kabuki theater. I hear him at night in that theatrical voice. My mother wears a print dress decorated with giant chrysanthemums. She has a shy, coy smile, the coquette of romantic movies, a fugitive of war in Casablanca. Nightbreaker was her Humphrey Bogart. I was conceived there, in the grassy background of that snapshot, on the banks of the moat outside the Imperial Palace. My royal conception. Ronin must be my name, an orphan of the ruins outside the imperial moat. My only association is a snapshot simulation, and the evidence of my conception is an emulsive document. No dates, no records, and no relatives to celebrate my first, sudden breath in the world. Yet, the animistic stories of my survivance are perfect memories. Death is my vision in the faint morning light. The master said, We are separated from a sense of presence because of our fear of death. Consider the instance of nuclear wounds every morning and the fear of death vanishes. The samurai warrior is never shamed by the fear of death. My first death was by chance, a high fever at the orphanage. Great ravens crashed through the windows in a burst of brilliant light. | RONIN OF THE IMPERIAL MOAT | 16 | Suddenly, my feathers, yes my feathers, turned black and we soared over paddy fields and circled Mount Fuji. I could see the orphanage in the distance and blue shivers of waves on the bay. We soared over docks, bridges, ceremonies, and military camps in the ruins of great cities. Many kabuki actors posed at a distance in traditional costumes. Tokyo, to the north, was an expanse of shanties and mounds of ashes. The Oasis of Ginza and the Imperial Palace were standing alone in the ruins of war. My father was there, an interpreter for the occupation army. We soared over the imperial moat and my father watched me circle and dive right past his shoulder. My mother, in the abundant reign of the emperor, leaned back under the course of raucous ravens, raised those puffy chrysanthemums, and conceived an ainoko boy, me, on the moist grassy bank of that moat. My second death was staged seven years later. Those vivid scenes of ravens last night after night. I could not resist the wonder and lust of the ruins and ran away to Tokyo. Most of the shanties were gone and the streets were cleared. The new public buildings obstructed some views of Mount Fuji. I camped for three nights in the memory of my parents, as they had appeared to me in my death dream as a raven. Many soldiers and bugi dancers were on the moat that night. I stood in the same place my father watched me soar over his shoulder. The imperial ravens circled overhead and teased me on that grassy mound near the moat, the actual site of my conception in the wicked reign of the emperor. The ravens strutted on the empire bridge, bounced and croaked in the secure trees. My tatari, raven vengeance, in a nuclear theater. I am memory, the destroyer of peace. I am time, the vengeance of fake peace. I am the father, a perfect memory. I am death, the apparition of peace. The idea of peace is untrue by nature, a common counterfeit of nations , but the most treasonous peace is based on nuclear victimry. There is no more treacherous a peace than the nuclear commerce of the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. I am dead, the one...

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