At The Temple There Is A Poem

I Worried She Might Spend An Afternoon Chatting With Me About The Sights And Then Wish Me Best Of Luck.

I Fell Into A Sound Sleep And Dreamed That I Was At A Banquet Back In Gion, Talking With An Elderly Man Who Was Explaining To Me That His Wife, Whom He'd Cared For Deeply, Wasn't Really Dead Because The Pleasure Of Their Time Together Lived On Inside Him.

Yet Somehow The Thing That Startled Me Most, After A Week Or Two Had Passed, Was That I Had In Fact Survived.

It's Your Duty To Use What Influence You Have, Unless You Want To Drift Through Life Like A Fish Belly-up On The Stream" "i Wish I Could Believe That Life Really Is Something More Than A Stream That Carries Us Along, Belly-up" "alright, If It's A Stream, You're Still Free To Be In This Part Of It Or That Part, Aren't You? The Water Will Divide Again And Again. If You Bump, And Tussle, And Fight, And Make Use Of Whatever Advantages You Might Have-" "oh, That's Fine, I'm Sure, When You Have Advantages." "you'd Find Them Everywhere, If You Ever Bothered To Look!

If You Have Experienced An Evening More Exciting Than Any In Your Life, You're Sad To See It End; And Yet You Still Feel Grateful That It Happened.