Japanese meditations on love

Ono no Komachi (834?-?) and Izumi Shikibu (974?-1034?) are Japan’s two greatest female poets.  Both lived during the brilliant Heian era and were renowned in their lifetime for their exquisite poetry.  For Valentine’s Day, I offer you some of their poems, many of which deal with the vicissitudes of love.  (These translations appear in The Ink Dark Moon, Translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratami, Vintage Books, 1990.)

Ono no Komachi

My longing for you—

too strong to keep within bounds.

At least no one can blame me

when I go to you at night

along the road of dreams.

The autumn night is long only in name— we’ve done no more than gaze at each other and it’s already dawn.

I thought to pick

the flower of forgetting

for myself,

but I found it

already growing in his heart.

Izumi Shikibu

Lying alone,

my black hair tangled,

uncombed,

I long for the one

who touched it first.

In this world love has no color— yet how deeply my body is stained by yours.

Though we knew each other

without overlapping

our clothes,

still, with this autumn wind’s sound,

I find myself waiting for you.

Wishing to see him, to be seen by him— If only he were the mirror I face each morning.

The dewdrop

on a bamboo leaf

stays longer

than you, who vanish

at dawn.

This heart, longing for you, breaks To a thousand pieces— I wouldn’t lose one.

Even when a river of tears

courses through

this body,

the flame of love

cannot be quenched.

Poems of mourning for her dead lover:

One by one,

at day’s end,

the birds take flight

in all directions—

which could lead me to you?

Again daylight and I haven’t joined him. What should I do with this body that lives stubbornly on?