It is the time of rain and snow
I spend sleepless nights
And watch the frost
Frail as your love
Gather in the dawn.
IZUMI SHIKIBU
Before I met her
When I seemed to have
No troubles at all.
FUJIWARA NO ATSUTADA
I do not know
his heart.
This morning my thoughts are as tangled with anxiety
as my black hair.
LADY HORIKAWA
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
YAMABE NO AKAHITO
Maple leaves are floating.
On Mount Katsuragi,
High upstream, they are
Already falling from the trees.
ANONYMOUS, MANYOSHŪ
I could live as long as I wanted to,
I would not have to weep
at parting from you.
SHIROME
that in the depth of the ravine
of the mountain of my hidden heart
a firefly of my love is aflame.
ABUTSU-NI
I can no longer tell dream from reality.
Into what world shall I awake
from this bewildering dream?
AKAZOME EMON
How beautiful the Buddhist statues
At Saga
Half hidden in falling leaves.
IMAIZUMI SOGETSU-NI
In the wind like snow.
The thing that falls away
Is myself.
PRIME MINISTER KINTSUNE
A maple leaf.
MASAOKA SHIKI
Floating bridge of dreams
Breaks off. The clouds banked
Against the mountain peak
Dissipate in the clear sky.
FUJIWARA NO TEIKA
won’t tell, for it doesn’t know,
and don’t you tell
of our dream of a Spring night.
IZUMI SHIKIBU
To gather the young herbs.
So many petals were falling
Drifting in confused flight
That I lost my way.
KI NO TSURAYUKI
Others may forget you, but not I.
I am haunted by your beautiful ghost.
EMPRESS YAMATOHIME
How far
has he wandered today?
FUKUDA CHIYO-NI
Or will I remember
Beyond the world,
Our last meeting together?
IZUMI SHIKIBU
There is nothing to come between
the moon and me.
ENOMOTO SEIFU-JO
Is unknowable.
But in my birthplace
The flowers still smell
The same as always.
Kl NO TSURAYUKI
I was sure I would never get lost
in the tangled roads of love.
Now I have been caught
in the karma of past lives.
KENREI MON-IN UKYŌ NO DAIBU
How easily it goes on
How easily it goes out again.
CHINE-JO
In our room
By our bed
Gazing at your pillow.
KAKINOMOTO NO HITOMARO
I fell asleep thinking of him,
and he came to me.
If I had known it was only a dream
I would never have awakened.
ONO NO KOMACHI
Only a little while,
And we believed our love
Would last a thousand years.
ŌTOMO NO YAKAMOCHI
You went away the two of
Us wrote together
On a pillar a poem
About a white clover.
YOSANO AKIKO
House to make love, when over
The grasses of Inami Moor
There glows the moonfilled night?
ANONYMOUS, MANYŌSHŪ
Hurrying to say farewell
In the depth of night.
Our drowsy thighs touched and we
Were caught in bed by the dawn.
EMPRESS EIFUKU
Is disguised by the first frost.
If I wanted to pick one
I could find it only by chance.
OSHIKOCHI NO MITSUNE
I may live on
In the passing world,
Never forgetting
This midnight moon.
EMPEROR SANJŌ
And you do not come.
Now you say, “ I will not come.”
So I shall expect you.
Have I learned to understand you?
LADY ŌTOMO NO SAKANOE
In my dream
Than to wake and reach
For hands that are not there.
ŌTOMO NO YAKAMOCHI
Like a green mountain
With a cloud drifting across it.
People will know we are in love.
LADY ŌTOMO NO SAKANOE
How can I blame the cherry blossoms
for rejecting this floating world
and drifting away as the wind calls them?
SHUNZEI’S DAUGHTER
Onto a road of darkness
Lit only by the far off
Moon on the edge of the mountains.
IZUMI SHIKIBU
Not at cherry blossoms,
Not at Autumn leaves,
But at only a thatched hut,
By an inlet,
In the Autumn dusk.
FUJIWARA NO TEIKA
Burning with love.
The firefly burns
With silent love.
ANONYMOUS
The leaves of the bush clover rustle in the wind.
I, not a leaf,
watched you without a sound.
You may have thought I paid no attention.
KENREI MON-IN UKYONO DAIBU
The Spring fields to pick
The young greens for you
Snow fell on my sleeves.
EMPEROR KŌKŌ
Where there are no falling leaves,
Knows the coming of Autumn
Only by the sound of his own voice.
ŌNAKATOMI NO YOSHINOBU
On the bottom fluctuate
Through the clear water.
MASAOKA SHIKI
The colored leaves are falling.
If I could hold them back,
I could still see her.
KAKINOMOTO NO HITOMARO
Have not dried from the needles
Of the fir forest
Before the evening mist
Of Autumn rises.
MONK JAKUREN
Have hidden the paths
On the Autumn mountain.
How can I find my girl,
Wandering on ways I do not know?
KAKINOMOTO NO HITOMARO
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.
KAKINOMOTO NO HITOMARO
It would have been better
To have slept and dreamed,
Than to have watched night pass,
And this slow moon sink.
AKAZOME EMON
I long for this time
In which I am so unhappy,
And remember it fondly.
FUJIWARA NO KIYOSUKE
I can no longer see the path.
Still I find my way home,
My horse has gone this way before.
ANONYMOUS, GOSENSHŪ
Let us sit in the evening
And watch the lights of the boats
Caught and confused
In a net of fireflies.
ANONYMOUS
Light of the Spring day
The flowers fall away
Like the unquiet heart.
KINO TOMONORI
The host, the guest,
The white chrysanthemums.
OSHIMA RYŌTA
The sound
Of a diving frog.
MATSUO BASHŌ
This perfume comes
Is unknowable.
MATSUO BASHŌ
At night I sleep.
All night I hoe again
In dreams the weeds of the day.
ANONYMOUS
Was last year in May,
In May, bathing in a pool
Crowded with iris.
ANONYMOUS
How much I love you
All your
Mannerisms
Have become my
Mannerisms.
ANONYMOUS
My love shows in my face
So plainly that he asks me,
“Are you thinking of something?”
TAIRA NO KANEMORI
Falling out of the immense sky,
Is so great that it freezes
The water touched by its rays.
ANONYMOUS
On darkening Narumi
Beach, grow closer, wing
To wing, as the moon declines
Behind the rising tide.
FUJIWARA NO SUEYOSHI
as though they were
the water birds I watch
floating idly on the water.
My idleness comes
only from sorrow.
MURASAKI SHIKIBU
With a clear bright flicker and
You must go. In the early morning,
We help each other to dress
Trembling with sorrow.
ANONYMOUS
My hair is too long
I leave it
As you saw it last
Dishevelled by your hands.
LADY SONO NO OMI IKUHA
In a gust of wind the white dew
On the Autumn grass
Scatters like a broken necklace.
BUNYA NO ASAYASU
that will never come back,
as though it was the present.
Around my pillow in my dreams
the perfume of orange blossoms floated,
like the fragrance of the sleeves
of the man who is gone.
PRINCESS SHIKISHI
Of being and not being
And long for the mountain
Of bliss untouched by
The changing tides.
ANONYMOUS, MANYŌSHŪ
Dies beside its shell
NAITŌ JŌSŌ
I try to question it,
although it has obliterated
the spider’s web against the sky.
MOTHER OF MICHITSUNA
At Tago and saw
The snow falling, pure white,
High on the peak of Fuji.
YAMABE NO AKAHITO
Boating on Lake Nio
The moon and fireflies
To the right and left.
MATSUMOTO KOYŪ-NI
On the road through the clouds
Is there a shortcut
To the Summer moon?
DEN SUTE-JO
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
ARIWARA NO NARIHIRA
The night is very still
My heart beats
Like a bell.
ANONYMOUS, MANYŌSHŌ
About someone who was
A complete stranger
Until a certain moment
In a day that has passed.
SAIGYŌ
Even in dreams
For in my breast
The skies are overcast
And my mind is clouded.
ANONYMOUS, GOSENSHŪ
The wind rustles the leaves.
Deep in the night, the deer
Cry out beyond the edge of dreams.
MINAMOTO NO MOROTADA
Like two pine needles
Which will dry and fall
But never separate.
ANONYMOUS
is saturated with your fragrance.
Your vows of fidelity
were made to our pillow and not to me.
KENREI MON-IN UKYŌ NO DAIBU
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love.
KAKINOMOTO NO HITOMARO
visits my garden
where no lover comes.
ISE TAYŪ
This life of ours would not cause you sorrow
if you thought of it as like
the mountain cherry blossoms
which bloom and fade in a day.
MURASAKI SHIKIBU
At what age
Did you make your first journey?
ISSA
A bird cries out in sorrow,
As though it had recalled
Something better forgotten.
Kl NO TSURAYUKI
There is no way whatever.
The stag cries even
In the most remote mountain.
FUJIWARA NO TOSHINARI
The mountains and meadows sleep.
Only an old mill
Stays awake.
ŌKURA ICHIJITSU
Would always remain this way,
Some fishermen
Drawing a little rowboat
Up the riverbank.
MINAMOTO NO SANETOMO
Of dream to you, my feet
Never rest. But one glimpse of you
In reality would be
Worth all these many nights of love.
ONO NO KOMACHI
The road is hard to see.
Wait till moonrise,
So I can watch you go.
OYAKE-ME
on the wings of the wild geese,
written again and again
by their flight across the clouds.
MURASAKI SHIKIBU
Through the ford at Saho,
The plovers piping about me
As my horse wades
The clear water.
ŌTOMO NO YAKAMOCHI
