What Is It About Poetry?

Sometimes, when life becomes unbearably depressing, poetry helps you survive in the harshest of climates.

When you look around you and all you see is hell and ugliness, at least you can imagine a better world set in another time, as written by other people. An imaginary world, where reason and justice triumph!

This one is attributed to my favorite daimyō, Uesugi Kenshin [1]:

Poem	Helper
極楽も	ごくらくも
地獄も先は	じごくもさきは
有明の	ありあけの
月ぞ心に	つきのこころに
かかる雲なき	かかるくもなし

It's a truly brilliant one. Translation:

Paradise too,
hell too – beyond them,
the dawn moon;
upon the heart of the moon
there hangs no cloud.

And so, no matter what comes, the mind remains clear. The cherubs dancing, society falling into depravity, violence, nuclear bombs melting the faces off of people you once recognized – still the mind must remain clear.

Deep poverty, horrific violence, terrible disease, crippling loneliness, egotistical bastards stealing all the power, stealing all the money – still the mind must remain clear.

With the purest focus, no one can shake you. There is nothing in emptiness but clarity that comes.

Here is another famous one [2]:

Poem	Helper
四十九年	しじゅうきゅうねん
一睡の夢	いっすいのゆめ
一期の榮華	いちごのえいが
一盃の酒	いっぱいのさけ

Translation:

Forty-nine years,
a single night's dream;
a lifetime of glory,
a single cup of sake.

Do things still exist when we're not looking? People have been asking that for hundreds of years.

I'm guessing once you hit 49 and all you've been doing is drinking and fighting, you'll figure that out.

There is nothing in emptiness but clarity that comes.