This is my final “Lines from Kyoto” podcast—one poem a week for a year, 52 in total. Volumes of my villanelles available via Amazon.com. Thanks for listening. Bows and blessings, Preston Keido Houser

When common sense and decency fail, writers sometimes resort to satire in order to point to a higher morality.

Photo: Shippoji Temple, Nose, Osaka Prefecture.

Photo: Guardian spirit (nio) of a Buddhist temple, one of a pair, a manifestation of the bodhisattva Vajrapani.

cf. “The Cloud of Unknowing,” an anonymous work of Medieval Christian mysticism.

Photo: Myoshuji Temple, Kameoka, Kyoto

A dialogue twixt two voices: night and light.

“Lest human voices wake us, and we drown”—stolen from T. S. Eliot, the last line of the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Photo: Make Shrine, Sonobe, Kyoto.

Photo: Toji Temple, Kyoto

“He’ll [Kent] shape his old course in a country new”—King Lear, 1.1.190. Photo: “Suminoe no Niwa,” Fukusumi, Kyoto Prefecture.