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Contemplating 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.
I'm as happy with this translation of Komachi as a poem in English as I am with any of mine. I wrote it after reading two or three other translations. One of them--Rexroth's?--had something about the watching eye falling through the world. As I read more translations and commentaries, there was nothing else much like it. So thought perhaps my version drew on a rather dubious source. However, I've just found that the Japanese word nagame, here translated as "long rain," can also mean "to watch." So--dubious no more, and I'm happy again.
I'm as happy with this translation of Komachi as a poem in English as I am with any of mine. I wrote it after reading two or three other translations. One of them--Rexroth's?--had something about the watching eye falling through the world. As I read more translations and commentaries, there was nothing else much like it. So thought perhaps my version drew on a rather dubious source. However, I've just found that the Japanese word nagame, here translated as "long rain," can also mean "to watch." So--dubious no more, and I'm happy again.
Should the stream whisper come,
like a severed reed,
I would float away,
adrift as my heart.
Moonlight pouring through the trees
fills me up with autumn.
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