Short Poems

Sleet rattles on the leaves
of the bamboo grass,
and from the peaks
of deep mountains the winter gale
blows unceasingly

The long-drawn-out autumn
has come, stretching
like the float-borne strands
of the fishnets
of Cape Yura in the land of Ki

The leaves of the small oaks
of Mount Saho
turn a thousand colors —
it's autumn
and the cold rain comes down

Is it always so bleak a sight?
By reed shacks
the fierce-burning
fires of fishermen
boiling down their salt

In the rockbound pool
deep in the mountains,
leaves fall and sink:
so my heart sinks —
could she possibly understand?

If only the world
could stay this way always:
how fine — the towlines
of the little fishing boats
being towed along the shore!

I open the pine door
on streamers of dawn cloud,
the wind of the mountain storm
dashing snow
over my sleeve

I didn't mean
to recall the past,
but in my old village
in twilight rain,
that scent of orange blossoms —

Gull-haunted,
the windblown shore of Susaki
recedes from sight as the tide sweeps in —
you too have gone
but my love grows only stronger

Fabrics swirled in a thousand
baths of crimson,
spreading the sky
as the sun sinks
under the rim of the hill