Eglantine and campanula furtively
Placed in a letter, a moon setting
Beyond the plain, dew on the grass,
I wait.
Matsumushi singing of night, the late night,
Bell far sounds, and the crying of the wild geese,
All these things are love.
A horse tied by the bridle
To a flowering cherry.
When he shakes his head
There falls a snow of flowers,
Flower snow,
A snow of flowers.
Called out by the rushes
I go to my doorftep.
And there is dew.
Troubled heart and coloured chrysanthemums,
Their deep scent is troubling
And their gold colour.
How pleasant is the scent of sake
With a chrysanthemum petal floating.
White froft is on the opened petal
And the froft has
Coloured and deep
Transparencies.
In the morning I hid his overcoat.
Your overcoat is playing hide and seek.
It is raining so. Look at the green rice field
Where the wet frogs are singing.
I wish to keep him, but he will go to his own.
I call him back, but he goes to his own.
A frog jumps and goes to his own rice field
And the water there.
The world is leaving me. Night rain.
My heart, a fine rain,
Life is so uncertain,
Drop by drop in the mist.
One is very handsome,
And the other may be more sincere.
This downfalling of leaves,
I shall never have any luck,
I will always be alone.
A Stag cries and tramples the red leaves
Of the red maple. My heart is torn.
Very little happiness would be enough;
I see myself walking in a snow Storm to her
With a net of new carps on my shoulder.
I would have paper garments
And, on windy Winter nights
When the plovers cry,
Also have my little flaming brazier of pine cones,
My little red portable brazier.
I could not do without that.
It is true, is it not,
That I could not do without that?
A hole in the paper wall,
Who has been so guilty?
Through it I hear the breaking of a samisen
string,
Meaning bad luck.
Yet the predidion-seller says
That mine is excellent.
Love is unstable. I dream of a drifting
Barque. My body is limited.
My thought is infinite.
Things do not go as I would have them.
I see him in the dream of a light sleep
Or resting on one arm in place of a pillow.
Audible are the bells of Mil.
I bathed my snow skin
In pure Tamagava river.
Our quarrel is loosened slowly,
And he loosens my hair.
I am all uncombed.
I will not remember him,
I will not altogether forget him,
I will wait for Spring.
At Katushika the river water
Runs gently, and the plum blossom
Bursts out laughing.
The nightingale cannot withstand so many joys
And sings, and we are reconciled.
Our warm bodies touch,
Cane branch and pine branch,
Our boat floats in toward the bank.
The night is black
And I am excited about you.
My love climbs in me, and you ask
That I should climb to the higher room.
Things are hidden in a black night.
Even the dream is black
On the black-lacquered pillow,
Even our talk is hidden.
Butterfly
Or falling leaf,
Which ought I to imitate
In my dancing?
Midnight uncalm shadows Creaking the willow.
I am afraid.
This firefly
That has come to reft on my sleeve.
How ftrange it is,
How ftrange it all is.
The snow dances endlessly,
The snow falls in a whirlwind
Endlessly.
The wind-screen being put up
Provides our coming together.
Our bed of triple down
With its silk embroidered in butterflies and peewees,
My young lover.
The perch-bird with the tender bill
Comes back to perch.
With no care for duty or people
Or Strange looks or the opinion of other cats,
One Striped and the other white
Go on the edge of the roof
Or climb to the ridge of it.
Driven by the need of love
Which is Stronger than death.
One day the wind of Autumn shall come
And they will not know each other.
My soul, I envy the love of cats.
I have waited all night.
It is midnight and I burn for love.
Towards dawn I pillow my head on my folded
arms
In case I may see him in dream.
I hate these blustering birds.
Two in their little room
Far from other people and from life.
The silence of boiling water,
And she says: 'Listen to the wind
In the pine tops.
Midnight has passed and she wakes
And looks to left and right,
There is no one.
She only sees the long sleeve of her nightgown To left and right.
The nightingale
Climbing a bamboo Stem
Sings his love at every knot,
At every knot of it.
The season of long night is coming
When the leaves of the sainfoin redden.
I weep at every midnight.
If there were no moon
I would read it by the Winter snow light,
Or in Summer by the fireflies,
Or if there were no moon or snow or fireflies
I would read it by the light of my heart.
Spring all in flower
And the dark Stain of the pine foreft
On the watershed of the Sumida.
The gracious cherry trees reflected
In that deep water, which is love.
To-day two Chinese ducks
Float in the thread of the current,
And I too am married.
At the feast of Kamo
I put rose-mallows in my hair;
He never came back, and I am waiting.
Time has a way of piling long days,
Long days, long days
Into a great hill.
I know she is light and faithless,
But she has come back half repentant
And very pale and very sad,
A butterfly needs somewhere to rest
At evening.
A flight of flying cuckoos
Across the moon, a single cry.
Is the moon crying cuckoo?
Night pales slowly. Men are cruel
And women are not.
They weep and say over sorrow
For a small separation.
She sulkily pretends to sleep,
Turning her back;
Suddenly the pretty slender music
Of a samisen delicately fingered.
Reconciliation. Where is her comb?
But there are dawn bells.
Separation, and always, always separation,
A boat puts out on a lake of the Yoshiwara.
LaSt night a peach petal was wetted by the rain,
And when a girl
After her toilet said:
'Which is the more beautiful,
I or the peach petal?'
And he said:
'Peach petal wetted by the rain is incomparable.'
There were tears and a tearing of flowers.
To taste the living flower
To-night would be quite a good night, my lord,
If so you wish.
The device of the two copper plums
With silver in them
Slowly and very slowly
Satisfies.
Just as all finishes
Dew falls on my clenched hand.
I would rather the bean flowered yellow
And he were here.
Cherry flowers do not touch
The old Stones of the wall.
I am shut in here.
I am very much shut in here.
There is a part of the trap
Where the rat need not touch the curd.
The cherry trees are rose beyond Fuji.
What has happened to my thoughts
Since I knew you?
That is easy.
Until I met you I had no thoughts.
After he left me,
Two pillows,
One body.
Where is he now?
He muft be getting on for Komagata.
Damn that cuckoo.
Sad night rain, I count the Straws in the mat,
He will come, he won't come.
I twift a paper frog. Does it Stand?
It falls down.
A vague presentiment.
The little lamp goes down and up,
Its oil exhausted.
He was always capricious.
Ah, my soul, that is his voice.
The moon is diguStingly modeft
Under a great cloud
When I am waiting,
And when he comes
She spitefully breaks forth.
You are jealous, Madam Moon,
But we have had a few black nights
When you were lazy.
The pale day
Pierces the bamboo blind.
Grief pierces my heart
And I count the bands of light
Not knowing why,
Like that.
Really I am annoyed this
time And I have left her.
But the weeping willow wept at my door
And quenched my anger.
When the Spring rain has ceased
I will go back to her in moonlight,
But discreet moonlight and much veiled I
pray.
Autumn cafts herself carelessly over the earth
In a brocade of many colours,
And yet it is just now
That the crickets begin to change their cry to:
'Patch those rags, patch those rags.
'I think they carry economy
Almoft too far.
There is white froft on the pond
And on the grass.
There is light mift.
I walk on frozen leaves that go crack
And my heart beats
And it is delightful.
I deteft my phantom shadow
In the bright moon.
I look, thinned out by love,
And think, smoothing my hair:
Am I really as thin as that?
Wet in the rain of morning.
You are Still in my arms.
The hours in bed are quick hours.
See, how delightful I look with this paper on
my brow
As a bride's headdress.
What pet name
Will you give me when we are married?
But you have gone to sleep again
And do not hear the evening bell.
The breeze is so light
That when it soothes the green willow
It seems not to touch her.
Indiftind shadow.
We have set our two pillows
Very close in the bed.
Our mornings and our evenings.
And our useless little quarrels
And then our letters.
Is waiting or parting bitterer?
Let us not separate.
Because of his pretty gefture
I have fallen completely in love with him.
My letter written in common charaster
Will be worth more than a verbal message.
But I may not hold him yet.
I am going to drink sake all night
Without bothering to warm it.
I lie down on the floor
Juft where I am, and sleep.
I wake with a Start
To hear the night watch crying:
'Fire, take care of fire!'
The sparrow is excellently
At home with the bamboo.
One day the bamboo is shaped into a snare
And catches the sparrow.
Is that not so?
Two thrown fans
Have fallen across each other.
It is a good sign.
I see two mortals close in each other's arms
Like two leaves fallen together.
Will he be a fine chrysanthemum?
I will put him in a vase And
look at him. He
will be plum blossom
Having both scent and colour.
At little day
I am cold.
A maple leaf
Planes down and settles silently.
The things one believes.
I have hated day
Since this morning:
His insensitive glance
Looked at me coldly
Like the pale dawn moon.
A body that loves
Is fragile and uncertain,
A floating boat.
The fires in the fishing boats at night
Burn red, my heart burns red.
Wooden Stakes hold up the nets
Against the tide of Uji.
The tide is againSt me.
How the nightingales sing to the plum trees
And the frogs splash in the water.
That is love.
The call of people and of things
Is everywhere.
Dark clouds,
Fishing boats, At the will of the tide,
At the will of the wind.
They seem to move their own sails.
The ropes are woven in the old way
Like woman's hair.
Deep down in green reflections.
Ah, back her to the port of love!
To the passing dawn?
To a boat passing?
To the wake the boat leaves?
To the froth the wake leaves?
No more grieving.
I hide myself in my happiness
As a firefly
Hides in a moon ray.
Steps die on the brittle leaves,
I think of very much.
Evening, a perched crow
On a bare branch.
The end of Autumn.
The plum tree Still lives,
Even Still blossoms
Under the snow; my heart,
My most unfortunate heart
Also.
Three butterflies
On a rose chrysanthemum.
The white flies away,
The red flies away,
The black lights on my garment.
Meaning?
This evening I caught a firefly
To light my waiting soul
And for amusement.
My right hand covers the firefly in my left
And both are transparent and rosy
Because of it.
How funny!
The nightingale is quite wet
In the Spring rain.
The scent of the flowers of the plum tree
Rises at every beating
Of the wet wing.
Nightingales that play with flowers,
How charming that is.
Some birds do not know
Where they may neft at evening,
But I am a nightingale
And my master is a plum tree.
Soon I shall be free of my body,
Free to love. Is not that so?
And nothing else matters.
O dreams, do not bring me
The face of my girl in sleep.
My waking and my pain
Would quite unman me.
It is snowing, Winter,
It is snowing.
But the flakes
Are flowers also.
See, it is already Spring
By the cloud way.
Dew from the lotuses
Of Surugi Lake
Goes up in a light fume.
My hope becomes lighter than air
And disappears.
Yet a voice is saying: 'Who knows?
Soon he may marry you.'
Do you know why the Autumn moon
Spreads her desirable brightness
On the hill?
It is so that we two may count the leaves of the
maple
Falling
One by one.
I have no wish for A frivolous or coquettish existence,
I want the deep life of love.
have set up the double screen
Againa a wind balmed with the plum trees.
Come to me and I will love you In the tender light of a veiled moon, I will love you, far from the plum trees.
Yet afterwards in bed
I know I shall sulk and weep;
Frogs in the garden pool
All night, all night.
There are two in the small
room On this cold snow night.
Pretty half-meanings
As they tease each other,
Hair she has just washed
And cannot manage.
'You get on my nerves,' she says,
'Always chewing your toothpick.'
This dream of a Spring night
Grows complicated.
The smell of his body lies on the air.
The cloudy sky and my ringed eyes
Are veiled.
Are we not a couple
Made of flower and butterfly?
Well, well, I mean to say.
The cuckoo has sung all night
And at first they did not sleep at all.
There is sweet slumber after love
With a rounded arm for pillow.
The lamp was fetched away
Without their noticing.
The moon and the plum tree part not
On a very clear night,
But rather lie smiling to the snow.
Not a word is said,
But the scent the plum tree cannot hold
Goes up toward the moon.
And look at the innocent whiteness
Of the plum tree.
This sparrow lightingv
Harmoniously
On the bamboo.
In love things do not go quite so
Harmoniously.
It is I alone who love and suffer.
I hate his beaftly face.
Sky just at dawn between the trees
The cuckoo flies and hides.
I comb the wet hair on my temples
I am wetted and am happy.
I am so wet.
It rains this morning.
If I clasp my hands, my sleeve:
Dew and perfume and colour.
His picture remains in absence
Myosotis, memory.
If he flowered on a branch
I would plant him,
And love him every
Lonely hour.
It is because they fall
That they are admirable.
What is the good of clinging
Without hope?
Clinging violently to the branches,
Withered on all the branches,
Soiled by the birds.
How many nights
We have not come together.
The plovers of Awaji island
Mingle their crying.
I am alone and wretched
In this plank custom's hut,
Alone and loft.
That moonbeam entering to my pillow,
Would it were,
Just for once.
The wind in the roof
Is playing on three Strings,
Moon, snow and flower.
Right from the very small
Pushing of the Spring
The green of the green pine
Changes not.
What do the infant cranes cry
Fluttering from the neft
In the green pine top?
'Long live the King! 'they cry.
The green pine lives for ever.
The firefly singing not
Burns in silence;
She suffers more
Than the loud insed who says:
'Kawai, kawai!'
Why have I given all my soul
To a man without sincerity?
I regret it, I rather regret it.
It must be late
Autumn night
The moon falls
Wind is cold.
My dwarf harp, my little koto
Is by me on the pillow,
Lying lightly.
I flutter a chord
On the seven strings.
I hear the first wild goose crying:
'We have come back,
come back.' It is very late.
I want to send him a letter
But do not know what to write.
Tell me something,
White paper.
Noon on feet of felt
Has come into the city. Not a leaf airs.
On the rope of the temple bell
A butterfly is sleeping.
Every morning
You flower with new colours
And garland the well bucket,
Your petals are eyes
Blinded with dew.
You are delightful.
Flower long, flower differently,
Emerald cup.
I am the ordinary cherry tree
Whose flower is single.
It blossoms in the plain.
I am not one of those double Cherry trees.
If you promise, do it lightly.
Look at the maple leaves.
The light resist,
The heavy break away
And fall.
Is that not so?
Light affairs become frivolous
At Fukagawa,
My body is frivolous.
A thin, uncoloured chord on the samisen.
In intimate Nakatcho Street
Affairs are private,
And the news of our love
Spreads gallantly,
The way of the South-EaSt.
Two lovers are in the little room
And the screen has double hinges.
We pretend worldly fidelity,
Painting moles on each other.
Perhaps
We shall know in heaven.
The dew pretends she
Loves the love of the rush,
The rush that he loves no dew.
But the rush will blossom
And both understand.
If I think she loves me
The snow is light
On my umbrella.
Crying plovers,
Dishevelled wind.
Visitor this evening
We run up the long corridor
Clicking of clogs.
Only one man,
Only one person to be loved.
I go back to my room,
Retreat, honour,
Lacquered pillow,
Silence.
I hear the watchman's rattle,
Laughter in the next room.
Flowers under the snow
Scarcely betray their colour.
We meet and she smiles and is silent.
'If I must die/ she is thinking,
'I will die of love
As the snow dies.'
I moan for love
Before my birds.
They also are in a cage.
My small complaints
Are sorry like mouse cries.
The birds hop forward to tease me
And I like it,
Being so shut in.
The sake is cold
Because my torment
Makes me inefficient.
There is such a thing as great grief,
Such a thing as
Being shut in.
He rises and goes. There are
Rather dark clouds.
Shall I be noisy cricket
Or firefly burning in silence,
Dumb grief or tearful parting?
And when I think we might
Never have met,
Been utter Strangers.
Spring flowers at the branch end
Over the water.
Love is very deep,
Their reflection is very deep.
I had to wet my sleeves
To gather them,
And I want to go on
Wetting, wetting, wetting my sleeves.
This first snow
Is very white
Like first love.
My maid asks from the doorstep:
'Where shall I throw
The tea-leaves?'
Under the unnecessarily large
Mosquito curtain
My little heart
Is fiercer than a nightlight.
The flowers come to blossom, then
We look at the flowers, then
They wither, then