Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TORN KAKEMONO, by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TORN KAKEMONO, by                    
First Line: When I was very little, I went to a missionary school
Last Line: Like the mist in the valley that day.
Subject(s): Buddhism; Christianity; Scrolls; Buddha; Buddhists


WHEN I was very little, I went to a missionary school.
The foreign ladies were kind; there was a tree at Christmas,
And eggs at Easter, and many beautiful pictures
For Sunday-school lessons well learned. I became a Christian
And because the kakemono that had been my mother's,
And had hung in the tokonomo of the room where she died
Contained the picture of a Buddhist saint,
I took it from the little box, where it lay rolled
Together with my best kimono and the obi my mother had given me,
And tore it across the face of the Buddhist saint,
And showed it to the Sunday-school teacher for praise—which I received.
Then I was a little girl; now I am an old woman,
And have learned many things; among others
That no religion is good, none bad;
That no man and no woman is wholly good or wholly bad;
That a little of that which is in the worst,
As a little of that which is in the best is in me;
For I have felt impulses of the vilest,
As I have known moments of aspiration of the noblest
In my own heart. And I know that God,
If God there be, Buddhist or Christian,
Will judge men and women by their strivings
And aspirations more than by their deeds.
And I know that God—if God there be—
Will judge no man by the aspect of God he worships,
Or by the saint he loves; or woman either.
So gently I paste together the torn edges of the old kakemono
That was my mother's, the beauty of which
In my youthful arrogance I destroyed.
That was before the day I stood on the hill,
To be alone a little with the pain in my own heart,
And saw the mist rise from the valley below.
A little at a time it rose, and the sun seemed to shine
On that spot alone that was free from mist.
Sun-gilded, shimmering, a world new-born,
Seemed for the moment each tiny earth-spot.
And my heart understood—and understands—
The meaning of pain, and man's cruelty
And bigotry and intolerance; each mistaking
His own little earth-spot of mind and spirit
For that world of many worlds and many universes
Which only God—the sun of all suns—knows and illumines.
But because I am a woman and ignorant
I can not say what I would,
But can only paste together with reverence
The kakemono picturing the Buddhist saint,
And hang that by the side of the picture of the Christ on the Cross,
Knowing that both are rays of God's sun-light,
Shining through the valley of chaos and pain—this hell that men call earth;
And that—it may be—slowly this mist, too, is lifting,
Like the mist in the valley that day.





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