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- Yamato Monogatari
Akenu tote isogi mo zo suru Ōsaka no kiri tachinu tomo hito ni kikasu na
He may hurry off, saying the night is over. So even though the mist has risen at Ōsaka, do not let him hear of it.
Ikani shite ware wa kienamu shiratsuyu no kaerite nochi no mono wa omowaji
How am I to melt away like the white dew, and be gone altogether, so that after going home I need not think of you so?
Kakiho naru kimi ga asagao mite shi kana kaerite nochi wa mono ya omou to
I should like to see your morning face, the way one sees the morning glory at the hedge — to see whether you really brood once you have gone home.
Kokoro o shi kimi ni todomete kinishikaba mono omou koto wa ware ni ya aruramu
Since I left my heart behind with you and came away without it, can the one doing the brooding really be me?
Tamashii wa okashiki koto mo nakarikeri yorozu no mono wa kara ni zo arikeru
The soul, it turns out, has nothing much to be said for it. Everything there is is shell — nothing but the empty shell.
Takaku tomo nani ka wa semu kuretake no hitoyo futayo no ada no fushi o ba
High though you may be, what use is that to me? Like the joints of bamboo — one night, two nights, and no more: idle joinings, and nothing else.
Yuyushi tote imu tomo ima wa kai mo araji uki o ba kore ni omoiyoseten
They call it ill-omened and shun it — but there is no use in that now. Let me send with this the bitterness that is left to me.
Yuyushi tote imikeru mono o waga tame ni nashi to iwanu wa ta ga tsuraki nari
Ill-omened, they say, and to be shunned — and yet you would not tell me you had none. Which of us is the unkind one?
Mono omou to tsukihi no yuku mo shiranu ma ni kotoshi wa kyō ni hatenu to ka kiku
So taken up with longing that I never marked the months and days going by, I hear now that the year comes to its end today.
Ikani shite kaku omou chō koto o dani hitozute narade kimi ni kikasemu
How am I to bring this one thing — that I feel as I do — to your hearing, not through someone else's mouth but straight from me?
Kyō soe ni kurezarame ya wa to omoedomo taenu wa hito no kokoro narikeri
Today too will come to evening in its own time — how should it not? And still, what cannot wait that long is the human heart.
Ise no umi no chihiro no hama ni hirou tomo ima wa kainaku omooyuru kana
Though I were to search the wide shore of the sea at Ise and gather shells there, it would be to no purpose now.
Naki hito no sumori ni dani mo narubeki o ima wa to kaeru kyō no kanashisa
You might at least have stayed on, like the egg left unhatched in a dead woman's nest. And today you say it is over, and go.
Sumori ni to omou kokoro wa todomuredo kai arubeku mo nashi to koso kike
The wish to stay on as that unhatched egg — that much of my heart I leave here. But I am told there would be no use in it, no life in the shell.
Shirayama ni furinishi yuki no ato taete ima wa Koshiji no hito mo kayowazu
On Shirayama the snow has fallen and the tracks are gone, and now no one comes along the Koshi road — the road he once came by.
Nami no tatsu kata mo shiranedo watatsumi no urayamashiku mo omooyuru kana
I do not know which way the waves are setting; and still, like the bays of the sea, I find that I envy them.