{"id":65928,"date":"2015-11-09T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=65928"},"modified":"2015-11-02T10:27:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T10:27:40","slug":"the-emperors-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/11\/the-emperors-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emperor\u2019s Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The iron mountain towers above us<br \/>\nrobed in mist, its crags<br \/>\nreach through the clouds into heaven,<br \/>\na single white waterfall seems<br \/>\nto thread down from the sky<br \/>\nin steps and fragments<br \/>\nand, like the trail behind us,<br \/>\ndisappears the way we have come.<br \/>\nI see my lieutenant up ahead<br \/>\nalone on his horse.<br \/>\nHe reminds me of myself.<br \/>\nThough I am the greatest emperor<br \/>\nthe world has ever known,<br \/>\nthe mountain towering above<br \/>\nwas here before I came,<br \/>\nwill remain when I have gone.<br \/>\nThe first heavy rain will obliterate<br \/>\nour footprints and any sign of our passing.<br \/>\nIn ten springs, a hundred, a thousand,<br \/>\nthis path will remain the signature<br \/>\nof a traveler unknown, and the mist<br \/>\nwill continue to swirl and dissipate<br \/>\nlike poems breathed on air.<br \/>\n________________________________<\/p>\n<p><em>From <\/em>Iron Mountain<em>, Beach Holme Press, copyright 2001, Mark Frutkin.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Mark Frutkin is a Canadian poet and novelist. <\/em><em>Web site: <u><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.markfrutkin.com\" >www.markfrutkin.com<\/a><\/u> Blog: <u><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.markfrutkin.blogspot.com\" >www.markfrutkin.blogspot.com<\/a><\/u><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The iron mountain towers above us<br \/>\nrobed in mist, its crags<br \/>\nreach through the clouds into heaven,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}