But the skies
are sometimes blue like porcelain, and sometimes green like jade,
and sometimes red like garnet. But the night is always ebony
and always returns, said the Emperor Ho.
"The sky-breaker came at evening very suddenly, for I had hardly
seen any stirring in the tops of the green trees over which I look
as over a sea, when I go to the top of the temple at morning.
And yet when he came, it was as if an elephant had strayed
from the armies of the great kings of India. For palms snapped,
and bamboos broke, and there came forth in the sunshine before
the temple one taller than the sons of men.
"Strips of red and white hung about him like ribbons of a carnival,
and he carried a pole with a row of teeth on it like the teeth of a dragon.
His face was white and discomposed, after the fashion of the foreigners,
so that they look like dead men filled with devils; and he spoke
our speech brokenly.
"He said to me, `This is only a temple; I am trying to find a house.'
And then he told me with indelicate haste that the lamp outside his house
was green, and that there was a red post at the corner of it.
"`I have not seen your house nor any houses,' I answered.
`I dwell in this temple and serve the gods.
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