THE pangs of love and longing are as old as language itself. Here are three emotional snippets from the Japan of more than 1,000 years ago. They can be found in From the Morning of the World, poems from the Manyoshu, the first anthology of poetry in Japanese, translated by Graeme Wilson (Harvill, 1991).
WAITING
I wait and wait. He does not come.
The wild geese coldly cry.
The night grows late and yet more late
And, from a freezing sky,
The wind blows hard. It turns to ice
This snow upon my sleeves,
And ground-frost hardens to a crust
Of frozen grass and leaves.
On such a night he’ll never come.
How could he come? Instead,
Hoping at least I’ll dream he came,
I shiver back to bed.
Anonymous (eighth century)
WINTER WAITING
Is he here? Is he back? I asked them:
No one seemed to know.
I ran outside to look for him
As fast as I could go,
Into an empty courtyard
And the sibilance of snow.
Anonymous (eighth century)
THE HARVEST OF THE HEART
Seven big-wheeled wagons
Were not enough to cart
These shining sheaves of love-thoughts,
This harvest of my heart:
Seven wagons big enough
Never could be found
To take the weight of happiness
My heart can carry round.
Princess Hirokawa (written c.750)
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