Pampas grass

Beyond the bamboo thicket

a scattering of thatched-roof houses.

Someone seems to be playing a biwa,

its notes sounding high and low.

Clumps of pampas grass stand tall and straight,

listening in stillness.

Could a prince who gave his life for the realm,

a princess who languished for love,

have emerged from the world of shadows

to take this form?

Have the prince and princess,

who would have been lonely by themselves,

brought with them their many retainers

arrayed in spike-plumed finery?

Fields of pampas grass

will not grow among the bustle and pomp

of the capital.

In their flowing green trousers,

have they come to rest and set down roots

among the mountains,

fatigued from wandering across open plains?

Pampas plumes ready to open!

With your wire-thin legs,

your arms of silver,

your faces of gold,

to whom do you call out

so persistently?

Do you yearn to clasp the sleeve

of one now gone?

The wind blows over the path

of flourishing and decline.

The pampas shed tears of jeweled dew

opening their plumes

in the face of frigid gusts.

Childhood memories—

harvest moon like a painting.

Now, even our dreams of moon-viewing

bring only sadness.

How would the Man’yo poets of old have sung such feelings?

How would the Kokin era poets have written of them?

Hakone Road at dusk.

Mount Fuji capped with snow

looms in vague majesty.

But for this field of pampas grass

—like delicately stroked patterns

of gold-tipped brush on lacquer—

these scenes from your lives

would have been lost.

The path of glory and decay

is swept by the autumn wind.

Pampas grasses!

Do you quietly reflect on your

now aged state?

Do you choose to live in high-minded dignity

by roadsides and embankments,

shunning the paths trod by youth?

Or do you live taking in the sight

of those who, in the springtime of life,

flower and rise to new heights?

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First published in the book Shonen ni kataru (Advice for Children), in April 1971.

biwa: a stringed instrument resembling a lute.

Man’yo: indicates the eighth century when the Man’yoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), the earliest poetry collection in Japan, was compiled. It was a time when not only the nobility but ordinary people as well freely expressed their feelings in the form of short poems.

Kokin era: indicates the ninth and early tenth centuries, the period succeeding the Man’yo period. Kokin is an abbreviation of Kokinwakashu (A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern), an important anthology which includes numerous sophisticated poems by aristocrats.

Hakone: a town in Kanagawa Prefecture, neighboring Tokyo, noted for its scenic beauty.