Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Three Japanese Tankas

1
Sent anonymously to a man in front of the screens of my room:

Should the world of Love
end in darkness
without our glimpsing
that cloud-gap
where the moon's light fills the sky?

2
Sent to a man who seemed to have changed his mind:

Since my heart placed me
on board your drifing ship
not one day has passed
that I haven't been drenched
in cold waves

3
Sent in a letter attached to rice stalk with an empty seed husk:

How sad I hope
to see you even now,
after my life has emptied itself
like this stalk of grain
into the autumn wind


Written by: Ono Komachi
Translated by:Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani

3 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. "you do good." How eloquent. This work of literature deserves more than your feeble attempts to understand its entirety.

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  2. Um, I'm not the one who wrote this. Ono Komachi is, this is the english translation

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