Selected Tanka

 

Bokusui Wakayama

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朝地震す空はかすかに嵐して一山白きやまざくらばな

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A faint morning quake and a subtle foreboding
of a storm in the sky
and white cherry blossoms all over a mountain

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山奥にひとり獣の死ぬるよりさびしからずや恋の終りは

 

More miserable than
a beast dying a solitary death in the recesses of
the mountains must be a love drawing to an end like this

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渓(たに)あひのみちはかなしく白樺の白き木立にきはまりにけ

 

The sorrow of a path

making its way all through this deep valley
reaches its apex at
a grove of white birches

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忘却のかげかさびしきいちにんの人あり旅をながれ渡れ

 

Here is a man
thoroughly solitary –
a shadow of oblivion
drifting one place
to another, flowing on and on

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妻や子をかなしむ心われと身をかなしむこころ二つながら燃

 

Myself lamenting
my wife and children’s lives and my own,
lamenting body and soul burning side by side

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石越ゆる水のまろみを眺めつつこころかなしも秋の渓間(たにま)に

 

In this autumn valley
my mind leans to lament
while staring at
the roundness of the river waters going over every stone

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春白昼ここの港に寄りもせず岬を過ぎて行く船のあり

 

Without calling at
this vernal noonday port
a boat goes on
and on, passing a promontory, receding into the distance

 

 

酒ほしさまぎらはすとて庭に出でつ庭草をぬくこの庭草を

 

To divert myself
from this violent thirst for sake, I go out
to this small garden and weed – O weeds, I’m now all attention

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––––Translations by Gregory Dunne and Goro Takano

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