Classic Poem

Our prince, pliant as the soft bamboo,
our sovereign with ruddy cheeks,
like a god has been enshrined
on looming Mount Hatsuse,
so said a person bearing the catalpa branch.
Was it a deceiver's rumor I heard?
Was it a madman's word I heard?
What I regret most in heaven and earth,
what I regret most in this world —
as far as the heavenly clouds, to the end of all distances,
to the place where heaven and earth meet
I should have walked with my stick or without it,
consulted words at evening, divined with stones;
I should have built a sacred seat in my house,
put a holy jar near my pillow,
strung bamboo rings uninterruptedly and hung them,
put a robe-tucking sash of hemp on my upper arms,
and in my hands a seven-jointed sedge
from the Field of Sasara that's in heaven,
I should have gone out and purified myself
on the Riverbed of Eternal Heaven.
But on the crag of a high mountain
he has seated himself.

ENVOYS

Is it a deceiver's rumor, a madman's word? — that on the crag of a high mountain you lay
yourself

Unlike the stand of cedars on Mount Furu at Isonokami, you are not one I'll let pass from my
mind