Today again
I’ll go to the hill
where the pine winds blow –
perhaps to meet my friend
who was cooling himself there yesterday.
~ Saigyo (Poems of a Mountain Home)
…submitted in response to Lost in Translation’s photo challenge: s-curve.
tanka
private wish
On a road with not a soul
to keep me company,
as summer begins
a child’s private wish
sent me on my way
the world seems…
Is it because my mind
keeps dwelling
on every worldly thing
the the word seems
more hateful to me than ever?
~SaigyO (Poems of a Mountain Home)
SaigyO was born in 1118 in the capital city, Kyoto. When he was twenty-two he suddenly left his post as an elite private guard of Emperor Toba to become a Buddhist priest. I find it interesting how his poem written almost a thousand years ago resonates with me today especially when I think of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s (who was born in 1808) translated epigram, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
what’s beyond
I don’t know
what’s beyond the mountain
where the late sunlight streams
but already I’ve sent
my mind on ahead
~Saigyo (Trans: B Watson, Poems of a Mountain Home)
lost in thought
The colors of the flowers fade
as the long rains fall,
as lost in thought,
I grow older
~Ono No Komachi (K Rexroth & I Atsumi, The Burning Heart)
idle thoughts
Color of the flower
Has already faded away,
While in idle thoughts
My life passes vainly by,
As I watch the long rains fall.
~Ono no Komachi
how lonely….
on a tree standing
by the cliff in an old farm
a dove –
how lonely his voice
calling for a friend this evening ~Saigyo (M Ueda, Far Beyond the Field)
thankful tears
May that lady live one thousand years who guards the flowers!
My sleeves are wet with thankful tears
As though I had been working
In a garden of dewy chrysanthemums.
~Murasaki Shikibu (Trans: A Omori & K Doi, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)
parting dreams
this spring night
the floating bridge of dreams
broke off
parting with the mountaintop
low-lying clouds in the sky ~Teika
tangled…in ignorance
Minnows are helpless
Caught in the branches of a tree
Set out to lure them,
So we too are tangled
In the snare of ignorance. ~Lord Toshiyori (Trans: N Yuasa, The Year of My Life)
journey piled on journey
Journey piled on journey
At a distance of a thousand years
Will you see?
From the pines of Sue,
To the living pine groves
~Izumi Skikibu
100 days…98th day
Though we are parted,
If on Casper Mountain Peak
I should honor the sound
of the pine trees swaying there –
with the summer breeze.
.
a meditative journey 
You must be logged in to post a comment.