I have always believed one should date a poem by the year it is started, not the lifespan of the poet. This is the ko-sakka-sensu, or Old Style of Poems; while not, perhaps, as rooted in the disciplines of high, or courtly, Ki Do, there is something in its stateliness that I find moving. Gobanu-sama permits me this deviation; symmetry is the enemy of excellence, after all.

Besides, I have not yet finished this poem. It is still too long. When I first composed it, it had one hundred and thirty words. Think of that! One hundred and thirty words. All the secrets of the universe could probably nest in the soil of one hundred and thirty words and still have space to breathe. Ido, Gobanu-sama's predecessor, was indulgent in his great age. He listened to the entire poem, from start to finish. He told me that there were one hundred and twenty four unnecessary words in my poem; and then he died.

After seventy-one years of work, it is now down to seventeen.