28.7.06

ono no komachi

Spent most of yesterday reading the tanka, dark and beautiful, of Ono no Komachi, from separate volumes: The Ink Dark Moon (trans. Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani) and From the Country of Eight Islands (trans. by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson). Komachi is, without doubt, a writer of the highest order. Even though only a hundred, or so, of her poems survive, her work ranks among the greatest of Japanese poetry. She is to Japan what Sappho is to the West.

Obviously, Komachi was in tune with her world – and for me, that world remains alive. Her poetry is so rich with sensory detail, I can't help but smell pine, hear ripples from a stream, feel the night wind – and know my own life, from beginning to end.


I thought those white clouds
were gathered around
some distant peak,
but already
they have risen between us.

(Hirshfield & Aratani)


A time comes when
leaves yellow in the blustering wind,
pile up before you know it
like heaps of gloomy words –
is it that time now?
(Sato & Watson)


This pine tree by the rock
must have its memories too:
after a thousand years,
see how its branches
lean towards the ground.
(Hirshfield & Aratani)


This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots...
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.
(Hirshfield & Aratani)


The beauty of the flowers faded –
no one cared –
and I watched myself
grow old in this world
as the long rains were falling
(Sato & Watson)


How sad,
to think I will end
as only
a pale green mist
drifting the far fields.
(Hirshfield & Aratani)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

i love the stillness of time in these pieces...

i've learned a lot from reading your recent posts and archives. thank you for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this, Sam. A real pleasure to read.

beLLe said...

yes...deep susurration of the elements...Japanese poetry....a beautiful thing~~~


thanx for the share~

LKD said...

How sad? No, no!

I would mistranslate the last lines thusly:

How glad
to think I will end
as only (!)
a pale green mist
drifting the far fields.

Oh, my. It makes me truly, deeply happy to think that ending is possible.

If you've ever poured a loved one into the ocean, then you know how heartening it is to know that they live on, the end and begin in every wave.

Thanks ever so much for this post, Sam.

lorguru said...

I really enjoyed these. Thanks for sharing them.
-lauren

michi said...

beautiful, thanks for posting them!