Selected Poems
1
Though I go to you
ceaselessly along dream paths,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.
2
How sad,
the end that waits me –
To think at last
I’ll be a mere haze
pale green over the fields.
3
Blossoms blooming
Yet making no seed are
The sea-god’s
Garlanded
Whitecaps offshore.
4
On such a night as this
When no moon lights your way to me,
I wake, my passion blazing,
My breast a fire raging, exploding flame
While within me my heart chars.
5
The flowers withered
Their color faded away
While meaninglessly
I spent my days in the world
And the long rains were falling.
6
A thing which fades
With no outward sign
Is the flower
Of the heart of man
In this world!
7
Whose bloom will fade,
And yet the color does not show,
Is this alone:
In the world of love the flower
That opens in the human heart.
8
In this bay
There is no seaweed
Doesn’t he know it -?
The fisherman who persists in coming
Until his legs grow weary?
9
More heart-wrenching than
To sear my body with live coals
Against my flesh,
Bidding farewell on Miyakoshima’s shore
As you part for the capital.
10
Did he appear,
because I fell asleep
thinking of him?
If only I’d known I was dreaming
I’d never have wakened.
11
The autumn night
is long only in name –
We’ve done no more
than gaze at each other
and it’s already dawn.
12
When longing for him
Tortures me beyond endurance,
I reverse my robe –
Garb of night, black as leopard-flower berries –
And wear it inside out.
13
Since encountering my beloved
While I dozed,
I have begun to feel
That it is dreams, not reality,
On which I can rely.
14
Tears that but form gems on sleeves
Must come, I think,
From an insincere heart,
For mine, though I seek to repress them,
Gush forth in torrents.
15
Yielding to a love
That knows no limit,
I shall go to him by night –
For the world does not yet censure
Those who tread the paths of dreams.
16
I know nothing
About villages
Where fisher folk dwell;
Why must you keep demanding
To be shown the seashore?
17
Now that I am entering
The winter of life,
Your ardor has faded
Like foliage ravaged
By late autumn rains.
19
How bitter it is to see
Autumnal blasts
Strike the rice ears;
I shall, I fear,
Reap no harvest.
20
This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots…
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I’d go, I think.
21
Men call love
Is simply
A chain
Preventing escape
From this world of care.
22
His heart, grown cold,
has become my body’s autumn.
Many sorrowful words
may yet fall
like the rustling leaves.
23
I thought to pick
the flower of forgetting
for myself,
but I found it
already growing in his heart.
24
Those gifts you left
have become my enemies:
without them
there might have been
a moment’s forgetting.
25
Submit to you –
could that be what you are saying?
the way ripples on the water
submit to an idling wing?
26
The pine tree by the rock
must have its memories too:
after a thousand years,
see how its branches
lean toward the ground.
27
The hunting lanterns
on mount Ogura have gone,
the deer are calling for their mates…
How easily I might sleep
if only I didn’t share their fears.
28
Since this body
was forgotten
by the one who promised to come,
my only thought is wondering
whether it even exists.
29
This abandoned house
shining
in the mountain village –
how many nights
has autumn spent there?
30
If, in an autumn field,
a hundred flowers
can untie their streamers,
may I not also openly frolic,
as fearless of blame?
31
While watching
the long rains falling on this world
my heart, too, fades
with the unseen color
of the spring flowers.
32
Seeing the moonlight
spilling down
through these trees,
my heart fills to the brim
with autumn.
33
Upon my breast
Floats a boat of heartbreak
And I have just embarked;
There’s not a single day when waves
Do not soak my sleeves.
Ono no Komachi
(c. 825—c. 900)
Ono no Komachi (小野小町?, c. 825—c. 900) was a famous Japanese waka
poet, one of the Rokkasen—the Six best Waka poets of the early Heian period. She was noted as a rare beauty; Komachi is a symbol of a beautiful woman in Japan. She is also numbered as one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.
The place of Komachi’s birth and death is uncertain. According to one tradition, she was born in what is now Akita Prefecture, daughter of Yoshisada, “Lord of Dewa”. Her social status is also uncertain. She may have been a low-ranking consort or a lady-in-waiting of an emperor, possibly Emperor Ninmyō (r. 833-850).
As a poet, Komachi specialized in erotic love themes, expressed in complex poems. Most of her waka are about anxiety, solitude or passionate love. She is the only female poet referred to in the preface of the Kokin Wakashū, which describes her style as “containing naivety in old style but also delicacy”.
There are legends about Komachi in love. The most famous is a story about her relationship with Fukakusa no Shosho, a high-ranking courtier. Komachi promised that if he visited her continuously for a hundred nights, then she would become his lover. Fukakusa no Shosho visited her every night, but failed once towards the end. Despairing, he fell ill and subsequently died. When Komachi learned of his death she was overcome with sadness.
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