I love you —
do not forget me!
Like winds blowing
over the bay,
never let us cease!

If one can die of love,
then a thousand times
I must have died,
died and come alive again

I go on loving him —
a man awesome as the waves
of the sea of Ise
that thunder in
upon the shore

A person can die of love —
like a hidden stream,
unseen I waste away
each month, each day that passes

At my home
the bright dew fades
from evening grasses —
I too will fade away,
so helpless my love for you!

I love you,
it's utterly hopeless —
on the Nara hills,
under the little pines
I stand and weep

My keepsake —
look at it and think of me,
and I will love you
through the long years
strung like beads on a string

My wife is far away,
not here beside me,
and because the road
is such a long one,
my heart is restless
with feelings of desire,
my heart has no rest
from these feelings of pain,
and I wish I were the cloud
that crosses the sky,
I wish I were the bird
flying high above —
I would go tomorrow
and speak with my love,
and because of me
my love would be at ease,
and because of her
I too would be at ease —
if only I could see her
and be with her now!

ENVOY

So long since

TANKA

A bell lily blooming under a shrub in the summer field — love so unrecognized is painful
indeed!

Those sedges in light-flooded Naniwa —
you spoke as intimately as their clinging roots,
you said it would run deep into years, it would last long,
so I gave you my heart, as spotless
as a clear mirror.
From that day,
unlike the seaweed that sways with the waves,
I did not have a heart that goes this way and that,
I trusted as one trusts a great ship.
But has a god, a rock-smasher, put us apart?
Or someone of this world interfered?
You used to come but you no longer do,
and no messenger bearing the catalpa branch appears.