Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LAKE HAKONE, by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LAKE HAKONE, by                    
First Line: Many loves have I known and much intoxication
Last Line: Wherewith to drink to drunkenness.
Subject(s): Alcoholism & Alcoholics; Drinks & Drinking; Fuji, Mount; Water; Wine


MANY loves have I known and much intoxication—
With sake, with women, with war.
Only so could the horror of life
Be lashed into place and forgotten.
But the deepest intoxication, the rapture of sense and of spirit,
That whelmed me when first I beheld
The snow-capped cone of the sacred mountain
Reflected at sunrise in Hakone's waters,
Like an ivory fan on a coral bed,
I have never been able to recapture.
So I, who would know once more the oblivion of intoxication,
Shall climb again to the crater-cone
That holds in its hollow the sacred mirror,
Like one of the treasures in a Shinto temple.
And at the sight of God's mountain reflected
I shall know that while goodness has been soiled in the market-place—
Haggled over, bargained for, with coins of applause and of self-laudation—
That while truth has betrayed me, and I, truth;
Yet is beauty real in a world of phantoms,
And the Gods gracious to the man who has eyes
Wherewith to drink to drunkenness.




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