When my love becomes
All-powerful,
I turn inside out
My garments of the night,
Night dark as leopard-flower.
translated by Geoffrey Bownas & Anthony Thwaite
Japanese poet
tanka 1 by Ono no Komachi
A thing which fades
With no outward sign–
Is the flower
Of the heart of man
In this world.
translated by Arthur Waley
a tanka by Lady Ötomo of Sakanoe
Unknown love
Is as bitter a thing
As the maiden-lily
Which grows in the thickets
Of the summer moor.
translated by Arthur Waley
untitled tanka by Lady Kasa
To love someone
Who does not return that love
Is like offering prayers
Back behind a starving god
Within a Buddhist temple.
translated by Harold P. Wright
one last Valentine Day’s post: an old favorite of mine: a tanka by Akahito
I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.
Suma no ama no
Shio yaki ginu no
Narenaba ka
Hito hi mo kimi wo
Wasurete omowamu
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by Lady Izumi Shikibu
I go out of the darkness
Onto a road of darkness
Lit only by the far off
Moon on the edge of the mountains.
Kuraki yori
Kuraki michi ni zo
Itinu beki
Haruka ni terase
Yama no hi no tsuki
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
untitled poem by Lady Akazome Emon
I should not have waited.
It would have been better
To have slept and dreamed,
Than to have watched night pass,
And this slow moon sink.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
a tanka by Kakinomoto Hitomaro from The Man’yoshu
The traveler sojourning
on the fields of Aki
stretches as in sleep,
yet he cannot sleep,
thinking of the past.
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
from the Man’yoshu: a poem by Takechi Kurohito
Where does it go for harbor
the tiny boat
with no gunwales,
that they rowed around Cape Are?
untitled poem by The Emperor Yozei
Tsukuba ne no
Mine yori otsuru
Minano gawa
Koi zo tsumorite
Fuchi to narikeru
Falling from the ridge
Of high Tsukuba,
The Minano River
At last gathers itself,
Like my love, into
A deep, still pool.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Leonard Durso 