Nagisa naru
Sutareshi fune ni
Mizu michite
Shiroku utsureru
Hatsu-aki no sora
Left on the beach
Full of water,
A worn out boat
Reflects the white sky
Of early autumn.
-Yosano Akiko
[from: ONE HUNDRED MORE POEMS FROM THE JAPANESE, by Kenneth Rexroth, New Directions, 1974]
Rare spun silk
Asphyxiates her torso
Her tranquil song
Bound to no one
Thanks, Norb, she is truly one of the masters of tanka.
When I first came to Greece in 1966
I fell in love immediately with Neraida,
to her I swam out every morning in the bay
of Gialtra on the island Evia, but then I had to leave
and when I returned after the Junta fell in 1974
I saw her again lying on the beach,
a few years later her ribs seemed broken,
no longer her nose lifted stiff against the wind
for she was a fisherboat now missing her planks
which all the men had torn out of her for making fire
and so I mourn my love for that fisherboot now gone
up in smoke to signal like Indians do she lives on
where Gods steal man’s humor and chase Odyssey
through the seas past such loves as my beautiful Neraida.
Interesting how Yosano Akiko inspired two such beautiful poems (above) in ordinary (extraordinary) commentary–Jujitsu Wiker and Hatto Fischer. I thank you both–and Don too, who knows the way of tanka and the resonance of small.
Thank ALL of you, in fact, who take the time to comment on all the sites I try to maintain. Monsieur K. thanks you too. –nb