Beyond the splendor of Four Goodnesses
are other splendors that some men extol,
but goodness of the name, this poet says,
should hang on people rather than a scroll.
Kameda Bosai (1750-1826) was a major poet and calligrapher in Edo who copied on a poem with similar words onto a hanging scroll. Shunned by the Tokugawa government he was forced to make a living selling his poems and calligraphy. My poem is a riff on his, with major divergence in the second pair of lines.
12/30/07
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem