A thousand years may be beyond me,
but I can turn this morning into forever.
translated by David Hinton
poetry
from Ninth Anniversary by Nazim Hikmet on this morning, June 29, 2016
my head keeps loving, thinking, understanding,
my impotent rage goes on eating me,
and, since morning, my liver goes on aching. . .
translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
another anonymous Japanese poem
Did the cuckoo cry?
I open the door
And look out in the garden
There is only the moon
Alone in the night.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
anonymous Japanese folk song
Clear full moon,
The night is very still.
My heart sounds
Like a bell.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by Yosano Akiko
Come at last to this point
I look back on my passion
And realize that I
Have been like a blind man
Who is unafraid of the dark.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by Shami Mansei
This world of ours,
To what shall I compare it?
To the white wake of a boat
That rows away in the early dawn.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by Fujiwara No Yoshifusa
The years have touched me.
I worry that I grow frail with age.
But I only need to see
Your flower like beauty
For all anxiety and heaviness
To leave me.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
from the Man’yoshu
I loathe the twin seas
Of being and not being
And long for the mountain
Of bliss untouched by
The changing tides.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by anonymous poet from the Kokin Wakashu, 9th-10th Century, Japan
This world of ours,
Before we can know
Its fleeting sorrows,
We enter it through tears.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Spring Farewell by Wang Wei
Me in the mountains and now you’ve left
Sunset, I close the peelpole door.
Next spring when grass is green,
Will you return once more?
translated by Gary Snyder
Leonard Durso 