Saturday, October 22, 2011

Ono no Komachi




The autumn night
is long only in name --
We've done no more
than gaze at each other
and it's already dawn.
         (Tr. Hirshfield & Aratani)


Though I go to you
ceaselessly 
in my dreams,
the sum of those trysts
is less than a single glimpse
granted in the waking world.


  Was it because I fell asleep
      Tormented by longing
        That you appeared to me?
      Had I but known I dreamt
      I should have wished never to awaken.
               (Tr. Helen Craig McCullough)



                 I thought to pick
              the flower of forgetting
                for myself,
              but I found it
              already growing in his heart.
                       (Tr. Hirshfield & Aratani)


      A thing which fades
              With no outward sign
                Is the flower
              Of the heart of man
              In this world.
                       (Tr. Arthur Waley)





                 Those gifts you left
              have become my enemies:
                without them
              there might have been
              a moment's forgetting.
                                          (Tr. Hirshfield & Aratani)


        Sad -- 
              the end that waits me --
                To think at last
              I'll be a mere haze
              pale green over the fields.
                                     (Tr. Burton Watson)


                This body
              grown fragile, floating,
                a reed cut from its roots...
              If a stream would ask me
              to follow, I'd go, I think.
                                     (Tr. Hirshfield & Aratami)








The flowers withered
Their color faded away
While meaninglessly
I spent my days in the world
And the long rains were falling


  (Tr.Donald Keene)

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