ONO no KOMACHI: My Versions in English of Three of her Poems

Imagining My Death and Cremation

Sad to end as just
a green haze drifting pale
over distant fields.




Falling, the long rain,
the color from the flower,
the eye through the world.




Should the stream whisper "come,"
like a severed reed,
I would float away,
adrift as my heart.