Sunday, August 28, 2005

Late summer

Out in the garden
the bugs have stopped their chirping
on this rainy night -
but from the wall comes the sound
of a single cricket

- Kyogoku Tamekane

Has dawn come so soon?
The grass I trampled before
is white with dew
when I return through the fields
after a night with the moon.

- Emperor Fushimi


From Waiting for the Wind - Thirty-Six Poets of Japan's Late Medieval Age, translated by Stephen D. Carter (Columbia University Press, 1989).