40 ANCIENT PERIOD
When leaving my love behind
In the Hikite mountains—
Leaving her there in her grave,
I walk down the mountain path,
I feel not like one living.
Kakinomoto Hitomaro
Dialogue poems
If the thunder rolls for a while
And the sky is clouded, bringing rain,
Then you will stay beside me.
Even when no thunder sounds
And no rain falls, if you but ask me,
Then I will stay beside you.
From the Hitomaro Collection
• •
I thought there could be
No more love left anywhere.
Whence then is come this love,
That has caught me now
And holds me in its grasp?
Princess Hirokawa (Eighth Century)
An old threnody
The mallards call with evening from the reeds
And float with dawn midway on the water;
They sleep with their mates, it is said,
With white wings overlapping and tails asweep
Lest the frost should fall upon them.
