Goodness Of The Name Poem by gershon hepner

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