Japanese Poets

Upon the departure of Prince Ōtsu for the capital after his secret visit to the Shrine of Ise

We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Mountain Day.

Princess Ōku
Japanese
661 – 702

 

To speed my brother
Parting for Yamato,
In the deep of night I stood
Till wet with the dew of dawn.
The lonely autumn mountains
Are hard to pass over
Even when two go together-
How does my brother cross them all alone!

Whenever I am Melancholy

We present this work in honor of the 40th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Shūji Terayama
Japanese
1935 – 1983

 

Whenever I am melancholy I go out to watch the sea
Heading home from a used bookstore I go out to watch the sea

Whenever you are sick in bed I go out to watch the sea
On mornings my soul is wearing thin I go out to watch the sea

Oh, the sea!
Large shoulders and broad chest!

However cruel the morning, however brutal the night
It will come to an end

All life will someday end
Only the sea will remain

Whenever I am melancholy I go out to watch the sea

On the loneliest of nights I go out to watch the sea

Translation by Alex Fyffe

Beautiful Town

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 120th birthday.

Misuzu Kaneko
Japanese
1903 – 1930

 

Suddenly, I recall that town—
the red rooftops along the river bank;

and then, on the waters of that broad blue river
a white sail—quietly, quietly moving;

and on the grass of the riverbank
a young man, an artist
idly staring at the water.

And I? What was I doing?
When I think I can’t remember,
I realize it was all a picture in a borrowed book.

Translation by David Jacobson, Sally Ito, and Michiko Tsuboi

There Is No Resting

We present this work in honor of the 675th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Sesson Yūbai
Japanese
1290 – 1348

 

Who travels the Way heeds the Heart’s and the Way’s beginnings,
But the Way’s everywhere, without boundaries —
I’ll go till the rivers run dry, exhaust the peaks:
In the calm of the clouds I’ll sit, and watch the moon light up the heavens.

After the death of the Emperor Tenmu

We present this work in honor of the 1,320th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Empress Jitō
Japanese
645 – 703

 

Oh, the autumn foliage
Of the hill of Kamioka!
My good Lord and Sovereign
Would see it in the evening
And ask of it in the morning.
On that very hill from afar
I gaze, wondering
If he sees it today,
Or asks of it tomorrow.
Sadness I feel at eve,
And heart-rending grief at morn –
The sleeves of my coarse-cloth robe
Are never for a moment dry.

Morning Necktie

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 60th birthday.

Machi Tawara
Japanese
b. 1962

 

Set off to see for myself
my father’s name
carved in a Tohoku museum

Once the “world’s strongest,”
my father’s magnet
crouches on a shelf

Monday morning
the head of the Magnetic Research Institute
picks out his necktie

My father, perfectly at home
with rare earth elements,
loves Modigliani women

“Writing more love poems?”
half humorously
half anxiously

His present—
Sanuki noodles—
comes stuffed in a company envelope

Something warm in the way
he calls his wife “Mother”
without the least hesitation

He wipes his face with a hot towel
and sighs contentedly—
looking at him now I see an ordinary man

Moving away from the telephone
he sips his tea as if to say
“I’m not listening”

Forgiven
their inability to express tenderness—
men of my father’s generation

Translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter

Myself in the Manner of a Troubador

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 85th birthday.

Mutsuo Takahashi
Japanese
b. 1937

 

Mounting a horse with an abundant mane and in glittery armor, a hero
will have to have a face as dazzling as that orb of day.
But a base one ordered to sing of heroes,
I cannot have a face, however ordinary.

Like a photo of the hateful man an abandoned woman tore into shreds,
My face is torn apart and lost in advance.
Faceless, holding in both hands a lyre quite like a face,
on a hill with a view of the field shining with battle dust, under a plane tree,

or on a boulder of a cape overlooking the sea where triremes come and go,
I sit for thousands of years, I just continue to sit.
The odes that, faceless, I sing in praise of passing heroes
overflow as beautiful blood from the chest would I hade with the lyre.

Translation by Hiroaki Sato