Hirohito
(The Emperor of Japan has issued a rescript disclaiming his divinity.-Press report). ALWAYS the voices about me crying, A god! A god! Never the candles dying From the altar place: The ruthless gongs declaring The light of heaven in my face. HE waves of worship flowed Toward me, the air Rippled with prayer: It was then that the flattering incense Drugged me into a sense of deity, Yet I knew myself to be a man And like another limped with infirmity. HEY bowed, the people I could not know, , Expecting always the shining word. But their desire, finding no warm Divinity, But only the wall of my mortality, Fell like a broken bird. B UT now I go down to them, having shaken From me the hand of legend, And I walk the free road Never by Caesar taken. F my divinity all that remains Is the vesture flung down before the shrine, ; A strange and shrunken god that there must die Defeated by the splendour of a Lie.
J. R.
HERVEY
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19460118.2.20
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 343, 18 January 1946, Page 9
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173Hirohito New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 343, 18 January 1946, Page 9
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