A person can die of love —
like a hidden stream,
unseen I waste away
each month, each day that passes

At my home
the bright dew fades
from evening grasses —
I too will fade away,
so helpless my love for you!

I love you,
it's utterly hopeless —
on the Nara hills,
under the little pines
I stand and weep

My keepsake —
look at it and think of me,
and I will love you
through the long years
strung like beads on a string

My wife is far away,
not here beside me,
and because the road
is such a long one,
my heart is restless
with feelings of desire,
my heart has no rest
from these feelings of pain,
and I wish I were the cloud
that crosses the sky,
I wish I were the bird
flying high above —
I would go tomorrow
and speak with my love,
and because of me
my love would be at ease,
and because of her
I too would be at ease —
if only I could see her
and be with her now!

ENVOY

So long since

TANKA

A bell lily blooming under a shrub in the summer field — love so unrecognized is painful
indeed!

Those sedges in light-flooded Naniwa —
you spoke as intimately as their clinging roots,
you said it would run deep into years, it would last long,
so I gave you my heart, as spotless
as a clear mirror.
From that day,
unlike the seaweed that sways with the waves,
I did not have a heart that goes this way and that,
I trusted as one trusts a great ship.
But has a god, a rock-smasher, put us apart?
Or someone of this world interfered?
You used to come but you no longer do,
and no messenger bearing the catalpa branch appears.

TWO TANKA

I came to this spring field to pick violets. But I loved the field so much I've slept here all
night

Our sovereign familiar with the eight corners —
his eternal palace where we serve
in Saika Field — visible from its back
is an island in the offing. There on its clean shore
when the wind blows, white waves churn,
when the tide ebbs, lovely seaweed is harvested.
So noble since the age of gods,
that island mountain of Tamatsu!

ENVOYS

On the rocky shore of the island in the offing, the lovely seaweed — I will miss it when it
goes under the flowing tide

In vine-trailing Iwami's sea,
at uncertain Cape Kara,
deep-sea fleece grows on hidden rocks,
lovely seaweeds grow on the wild shore.
Like those lovely seaweeds, yielding, you slept with me,
deeply as deep-sea fleece I think of you,
but the nights we slept together were not many,
I came away, parting with you as trailing vines do.
My heart aches, center of my vitals,
longing, I turn around to look,
but on Mount Ferry of large ships
yellow leaves scatter, flutter so
I cannot see your sleeves clearly.