Japanese Poems of the Heian Period and Before: My Versions in English

Almost showed you plum blossoms

that were a light fall of snow.

--Akahito

How few the moments

that my gaze has lit upon

the flowers of spring.

How many the months and days

that I have passed without fruit.

--Fujiwara no Okikase

The sea slips from the shore.

One white wave again stands fast.

A crane in the surf.

--The Emperor Uda

Destinations unknown,

two ships that left harbor

side by side, now diverge.

--Saigyo Hoshi

Before the dubious shrine

I stand dumbstruck and crying.

--Saigyo Hoshi

This world, I try not to see,

still dogs me like a shadow.

--Minamoto no Toshiyori

...to be in this world

the seagull sleeping alone

on the tossing sea...

--Tagaya Masahiro

Leaves fall on the roof,

blurring the silence of night

and the sound of rain.

--Minamoto no Yorizane

Rising and falling, waves

scour the moon in the sea,

effacing nothing.

--Kiyowara Fukayabu

Between the eternals,

the unmoving mountains

and incontinent seas,

we are flowers, quickest

among fleeting flowers.

--Anon.

Long into summer nights

when I think at last of bed

the dawn cuckoo sings

--Tsurayuki

Foam on the water

I am, that still wants to live

for a thousand years.

--Otomo no Yakamochi

To an empty land

she and I would go and live

alone together.

--Otomo no Yakamochi



Sad to meet in dreams:
My hand reaches out to you
and flounders awake.
--Otomo no Yakamochi

Should we never meet,

and entwine,  threads making cord,

now this way, now that,

upon what line shall I string

all the jewels of my life?

--Sakanoe Korenori

The rare tanka I've managed to render as a tanka.



Yes, she may not think of me
not ever forgetting her.
--Anon.



Plum trees bloom again.
Empty as a locust shell,
my own springless world.
--Anon.



Love without requite:
a prayer in the temple
behind a starving god.
--Lady Kasa



But by its own call
on the evergreen mountain
the deer knows the fall.
--Onakatomi Yoshinobu



Unmistakably
even here, far south in Tsu,
winter's come at last

to my cottage, hidden down
in a blanket of rushes.
--Minamoto no Shigeyuki



That this day too comes
to dusk:  more clear with each note
of the temple bell.
--Anon.



Unbearably cold,
sanderlings cried in the wind
across the river

the night I went to see her
whom I loved beyond bearing.
--Tsurayuki