The long spring day,
its mists rising,
before I know it
has turned to twilight,
and the heart that crowds my chest
hurts me so
I moan
like the mountain thrushes.
Then from the mountains
where our great Lord,
a god aloof,
is pleased to wander,
a wind comes blowing,
and as I stand alone,
morning and night,
it turns back my sleeve
and I think how auspicious
is that one word "back"!
Back where her gun is.
I call myself a man of spirit,
but on this journey,
grass for a pillow,
my thoughts keep going back—
no way to stop them—
and like the fires that burn
when fishergirls of Ami Bay
boil down their salt,
these memories burn
deep within my heart.
Of their 50 caliber butts.
Because the winds across the mountain
blow without cease,
each night in sleep unfailingly
I think with longing
of my love back home.
With her clenched cheeks
firing again and again.
1 comment:
Trooper, I have no idea whether you are really deep or painfully shallow. I first looked up Ikusa no Ōkimi and learned about a period of Japanese poetry that I knew nothing of.
Then I found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNnlSlJs-1k
I spent time in Japan and after a few weeks it slowly dawned on me that even though on the surface things seem familiar - they drive Japanese cars, as do I, their cities are full of skyscrapers, like ours, and you can almost get fooled into thinking you can get a handle on what is going on over there.
You can't. They have thousands of years of history we will never understand, a language that is mostly impenetrable, and for all the similarities, they are as different from the West as they can be.
But at least I am not bashful. That looks painful.
Haiku:
Trooper writes a post
Girl sprouts a machine gun
Now I am fatigued.
Forms of poetry
Yamato waka waka
Japanese muppets.
There once was a man from Tibet,
Who couldn't find a cigarette
So he smoked all his socks,
then caught monkey-pox,
and had to go to the vet.
That last one was not strictly haiku.
Post a Comment