In addition to everything else, Saga is a very good poet. No, not poet in a teenage girl sense, but a real poet. Someone who can really see the world in a way that others don’t. And this is not just a proud father saying this — Saga just got news that she was shortlisted for the Foyle’s Young Poets Prize. They have real poets as judges and, get this, more than 7,000 submissions from all over the world. The letter congratulating her called it a “great achievement.” Yes, I’m proud, but I’m also not very surprised. She really is that good. Read this:

 

Thrones of Mortality

For there comes a time

When one must realize, that the Chinese emperor 

Was just a man who sat on a chair. 

A chair that – yes, 

Could conjure up the vicious howls

Of ancient phantoms, 

And exercise incantations from years of yore –

But was, in all simplicity,

Just a chair. 

And there comes a time

When one must realize that 

Confucius was merely the sweet aftertaste

From a night of

Wine-drinking, 

Love-making,

Sticky-rice-mauling. 

And that the lump on his bald head

Was nothing but a mother’s swollen womb 

Where a baby girl once slept

Before she was swallowed by her quiet mistake. 

And there comes a time 

When one must venture to the 

Realms of death and admit that –

Yes, there is a silence separating us and

Mortality, that spreads across the mind of

man like a black mud – 

But we must focus on the important things, 

The grass beneath my feet, for example.

 

 

 

 

 

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