Immortals ride truth
   With lotus in hand,
 As chaos unfolds
   Unlogged above land.

Moonrise in the East
   As good winds are fanned.
 Hill shrine in blue night,
   Bell rings clear and grand.

The god is now gone
   Beyond border lands
 Huangdi* is not there 
   Great Age to wasteland.

NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a crude translation of the fifth of the twenty-four poems. This poem’s Chinese title is 高古 (Gāo Gǔ,) and it was translated as “Height – Antiquity” by Herbert Giles.

*Huangdi is a name for the Yellow Emperor that is more syllabically friendly than “Yellow Emperor.” In a great oversimplification for the sake of speed and alignment of context, the Yellow Emperor was China’s King Arthur — a mythical leader of great virtue and heroism. The Tang emperors tried to trace lineages back to the Yellow Emperor, but such imagined linkages to the perfect leader are hard to maintain when an Emperor like Xuanzong crashes the ship of state.