The highway to Shinano Is but newly opened. Mind you do not trip Over the stumps of trees. Wear your sandals, husband. Translation by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite. The Man’yōshū (‘Collection of Myriad Leaves’) is the oldest of Japan’s poetry anthologies. Divided into twenty books, it gathers poems from approximately 456, with the bulk of the collection from the period between 600…
Let the Greek mould his clay into shapes, let him increase his delight by the fruit of his own hands; But our delight is to dip our hands into the Euphrates and to roam here and there in the fluid element. When I have thus cooled the ardour of the soul, song will sound by itself; when the poet takes…
Exquisite torment, dainty Mrs. Hargreaves Trips down the High Street, slaying hearts a-plenty; Stricken and doomed are all who meet her eye-shots! Bar Mr. Hargreaves. Grocers a-tremble bash their brassy scales down, Careless of weight and hacking cheese regardless; Postmen shoot letters in the nearest ashcan, Dogs dance in circles. Leaving their meters, gas inspectors gallop, Water Board men cease…
I am tired. I contemplate this town —a town like any other— where I have lived for twenty years. Nothing has changed. A child is uselessly counting the stars on the next balcony. I also try… But he is faster: I cannot catch up with him: One, two, three, four, five… I cannot catch up with him: One,…two.. three… four……
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain; Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, And through the air their mingled music floats. Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dyes are spread! But the west glories in the…
Among Pelagian travellers, Lost on their lewd conceited way To Massachusetts, Michigan, Miami or L.A., An airborne instrument I sit, Predestined nightly to fulfill Columbia-Giesen-Management’s Unfathomable will, By whose election justified, I bring my gospel of the Muse To fundamentalists, to nuns, To Gentiles and to Jews, And daily, seven days a week, Before a local sense has jelled, From…
Happy, who like Ulysses or that lord Who raped the fleece, returning full and sage, With usage and the world’s wide reason stored, With his own kin can wait the end of age. When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows! My little village smoke; or pass the door, The old dear door of that unhappy house That…
Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way. Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved, In a swift, circular line, To the right, Because of the firecat. Or until they swerved, In a swift, circular line, To the left, Because of the firecat. The bucks clattered. The firecat went leaping, To the…
Saying, ‘Shishi, shishi,’ My wife encourages the baby To pass water, and I hear The noise of a morning shower. Circa 1675. Hokku from the haikai no renga (comic linked verse) of Nishiyama Sōin, Ihara Saikaku, and followers of the Danrin school. Translation by Nobuyuki Yuasa.
When the morning star was extinguished the moon remained still. The sun waved a veil of clouds towards it over the mountain which forgot to doff its nightcap. A fine tapestry of roses woven on the windowpane by the frost. 1971. Translation by Bernard Scudder.
