In Your Honor
By Arthur Sze
In your honor, a man presents a sea bass
tied to a black-lacquered dish by green-spun seaweed.
‘Ah’ is heard throughout the room:
you are unsure what is about to happen.
You might look through a telescope at the full
bright moon against deep black space,
see from the Bay of Dew to the Sea of Nectar,
but, no, this beauty of naming is a subterfuge.
What are the thoughts of hunters driving
home on a Sunday afternoon empty-handed?
Their conception of honor may coincide
with your conception of cruelty? The slant
of light as sun declines is a knife
separating will and act into infinitely thin
and lucid slices. You look at the sea bass’s eye,
clear and luminous. The gills appear to move
ever so slightly. The sea bass smells
of dream, but this is no dream. ‘Ah,
such delicacy’ is heard throughout the room,
and the sea bass suddenly flaps. It
bleeds and flaps, bleeds and flaps as
the host slices slice after slice of glistening sashimi.