Pathetic Fallacy and Other Figures of Speech

At last with incense

All around his temple face

He looks like a man.

                          ~ Kenkabō

                                                         [Englished by Phillip Whidden]

Pathetic fallacy is needed for

Religions — all of them.  One poet says

A man he knew for many years before

His death now looks like he’s a man.  Death grays

Out what was not himself, not manly.  Man —

Himself — is what the poet sees at last.

Throughout his whole life, all its struggled span

Perhaps he lost his meaning.  Lost in caste

And work and whatnot, lost because of wife

And kids, he fumbled on and did his best

And thus he managed to allow his life

To lose.  He managed to become life’s guest.

  Religions tempted him away in rhymes

    And figures till we heard his funeral chimes.

~ Phillip Whidden