Yamabe no Akahito
Yamabe no Akahito Poems
The sturdy men
Leave for the hunt;
The maidens
Trail the hems of scarlet skirts
...
On the islands off the coast,
The jewelled weeds on their rocky shores
With the rising tide
Is slowly hidden, then
...
Heaven and earth:
Since the time they parted,
Of manifest divinity,
Reaching the heights of awe,
...
All-knowing,
My great lord:
From the eternal palace,
Wherein we serve,
...
When lily-seed dark
Night has fallen,
By the red-oak growing
Along the clear river's edge
...
From the morrow
Would I pick new herbs
But in my marked out fields
Both yesterday and today
...
At my house
I sowed and nurtured cockscomb
It withered, yet
No wiser, once again
...
From the bay at Tago
I see, when gazing out,
Pure white-
On the heights of Fuji's peak-
...
Off the beach at Waka
With the rising tide
The sandbanks vanish
Plunging to the reed beds
...
On Abe Island's beaches
Where comorants dwell
Waves pound
Never ceasing at this time
...
On Misago
Beach there grows
Sargasso weed-
I'll hold fast to your name
...
If the tide is out
Go cut me jewelled seaweed!
If my darling, at home waiting,
Wants a beach gift
...
In the bay at Mukoe
Circle little boats:
From Awa Isle
Gazing back-
...
Leg-wearying
Mountain cherry blossom:
Day-in-day-out
Were you to flower so
...
From the bay at Nawa,
Gazing back upon
The offshore islands
The boats around them
...
Among leg-straining
Mountains and the fields, too,
His Majesty's huntsmen,
Game-bows in hand,
...
The mists rise over
The waters at Asuka;
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
...
To my good friend
Would I show, I thought,
The plum blossoms,
Now lost to sight
...
Since olden times
On these ancient banks
With the passing of the years
By the pool water's edge
...
Yamabe no Akahito Biography
Yamabe no Akahito (700 - 736) was a poet of the Nara period in Japan. The Man'yōshū, an ancient anthology, contains 13 choka ('long poems') and 37 tanka ('short poems') of his. Many of his poems were composed during journeys with Emperor Shōmu between 724 and 736. Yamabe is regarded as one of the kami of poetry, and is called Waka Nisei along with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. He is noted as one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals. The American composer Alan Hovhaness used a text by Yamabe from the Man'yōshū in his cantata Fuji, Op. 182 (1960, rev. 1964).)
The Best Poem Of Yamabe no Akahito
The Sturdy Men
The sturdy men
Leave for the hunt;
The maidens
Trail the hems of scarlet skirts
Across the clean swept beach.
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4/16/2024 2:29:53 AM # 1.0.0.1119
I like To the fields in spring time though I prefer the transaltion done by Steven Carter in his book Traditional Japanese Poetry - An anthology as the language he uses in more suggestive. That said, I don't know which is a truer representation of the original.