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Japan has gods.  They know their place.  Their place

Lies set in leaves and flowers, in anger’s sea.

These gods all know one law of Stoic face

And steel, as rigid as those steels, those three

Combined to make the swords of Samurai.

This rule is that the gods, all gods, obey

The law of their own nature.  In the eye

Of storm or height of autumn moon, the sway

Of law requires the gods to be the waves

And stars in Milky Ways.  Unbending blade,

This rule takes grains of rice and emperors’ graves.

It waits as sacred green, green bevelled jade.

  Gods borne along a freshet force adhere

    To fate and never leave their distant sphere.

~ Phillip Whidden