Ono no Komachi

Selected Poems

1

Though I go to you

ceaselessly along dream paths,

the sum of those trysts

is less than a single glimpse

granted in the waking world.

2

How sad,

the end that waits me -

to think at last

I'll be a mere haze

pale green over the fields.

3

Blossoms blooming

Yet making no seed are

The sea-god's

Garlanded

Whitecaps offshore.

4

On such a night as this

When no moon lights your way to me,

I wake, my passion blazing,

My breast a fire raging, exploding flame

While within me my heart chars.

5

The flowers withered

Their color faded away

While meaninglessly

I spent my days in the world

And the long rains were falling.

6

A thing which fades

With no outward sign

Is the flower

of the heart of man

In this world!

7

Whose bloom will fade,

And yet the color does not show,

Is this alone:

In the world of love the flower

That opens in the human heart.

8

In this bay

There is no seaweed

Doesn't he know it -?

The fisherman who persists in coming

Until his legs grow weary?

9

More heart-wrenching than

To sear my body with live coals

Against my flesh,

Bidding farewell on Miyakoshima's shore

As you part for the capital.

10

Did he appear,

because I fell asleep

thinking of him?

If only I'd known I was dreaming

I'd never have wakened.

11

The autumn night

is long only in name -

We've done no more

than gaze at each other

and it's already dawn.

12

When longing for him

tortures me beyond endurance,

I reverse my robe -

Garb of night, black as leopard-flower berries -

And wear it inside out.

13

Since encountering my beloved

While I dozed,

I have begun to feel

that it is dreams, not reality,

on which I can rely.

14

Tears that but form gems on sleeves

Must come, I think,

from an insincere heart,

for mine, though I seek to repress them,

gush forth in torrents.

15

Yielding to a love

that knows no limit,

I shall go to him by night -

for the world does not yet censure

those who tread the paths of dreams.

16

I know nothing

about villages

where fisher folk dwell;

why must you keep demanding

to be shown the seashore?

17

Now that I am entering

the winter of life,

your ardor has faded

like foliage ravaged

by late autumn rains.

18

How bitter it is to see

autumnal blasts

strike the rice ears;

I shall, I fear,

reap no harvest.

19

This body

grown fragile, floating,

a reed cut from its roots...

If a stream would ask me

to follow, I'd go, I think.

20

Men call love

Is simply

a chain

preventing escape

from this world of care.

21

His heart, grown cold,

has become my body's autumn.

Many sorrowful words

may yet fall

like the rustling leaves.

22

I thought to pick

the flower of forgetting

for myself,

but I found it

already growing in his heart.

23

Those gifts you left

have become my enemies:

without them

there might have been

a moment's forgetting.

24

Submit to you -

could that be what you are saying?

The way ripples on the water

submit to an idling wing?

25

The pine tree by the rock

must have its memories too:

after a thousand years,

see how its branches

lean toward the ground.

26

The hunting lanterns

on mount Ogura have gone,

the deer are calling for their mates...

How easily I might sleep

if only I didn't share their fears.

27

Since this body

was forgotten

by the one who promised to come,

my only thought is wondering

whether it even exists.

28

This abandoned house

shining

in the mountain village -

how many nights

has autumn spent there?

29

If, in an autumn field,

a hundred flowers

can untie their streamers,

may I not also openly frolic,

as fearless of blame?

30

While watching

the long rains falling on this world

my heart, too, fades

with the unseen color

of the spring flowers.

31

Seeing the moonlight

spilling down

through these trees,

my heart fills to the brim

with autumn.

32

Upon my breast

floats a boat of heartbreak

and I have just embarked;

there's not a single day when waves

do not soak my sleeves.

Ono no Komachi

(c. 825—c. 900)

Ono no Komachi (小野小町?, c. 825—c. 900) was a famous Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the Six best Waka poets of the early Heian period. She was noted as a rare beauty; Komachi is a symbol of a beautiful woman in Japan. She is also numbered as one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.

The place of Komachi's birth and death is uncertain. According to one tradition, she was born in what is now Akita Prefecture, daughter of Yoshisada, "Lord of Dewa". Her social status is also uncertain. She may have been a low-ranking consort or a lady-in-waiting of an emperor, possibly Emperor Ninmyō (r. 833-850).

As a poet, Komachi specialized in erotic love themes, expressed in complex poems. Most of her waka are about anxiety, solitude or passionate love. She is the only female poet referred to in the preface of the Kokin Wakashū, which describes her style as "containing naivety in old style but also delicacy".

There are legends about Komachi in love. The most famous is a story about her relationship with Fukakusa no Shosho, a high-ranking courtier. Komachi promised that if he visited her continuously for a hundred nights, then she would become his lover. Fukakusa no Shosho visited her every night, but failed once towards the end. Despairing, he fell ill and subsequently died. When Komachi learned of his death she was overcome with sadness.