Saigyo

In a dream I saw
the winds of spring scattering
the cherry blossoms—
and after I woke, the sound
was still rustling in my breast.

Saigyo (西行; 1118–1190) was a Japanese poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura period.

Quotes

• The pathway I marked
  when last year I made my way
  into Yoshino—
  I abandon now to visit
  blossoms I have not yet seen.
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

• What's to be done?
  I thought I was past caring
  for the spring
  but my frozen water pipe
  has made me long for it again
  • Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021), McKinney, M.

Let me not spend my life
lamenting the world’s sorrows
for above
in the wide sky
the moon shines pure

• Let me not spend my life
  lamenting the world’s sorrows
  for above
  in the wide sky
  the moon shines pure
  • Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021), McKinney, M.

• That spring long ago
  at Naniwa in Tsu—
  was it all a dream?
  Now only dead leaves on the reeds
  rustle in the passing wind.
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

How I delight
in this well-timed snow
that buries the mountain path
behind me as I enter
intent on long seclusion

• That one back home
  whom I promised to think about
  when I saw the moon:
  on this night perhaps she too
  will be soaking her sleeves with tears.
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

• How I delight
  in this well-timed snow
  that buries the mountain path
  behind me as I enter
  intent on long seclusion
  • Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021), McKinney, M.

• This is what I want:
  to die in the springtime,
  beneath the blossoms—
  midway through the Second Month,
  when the moon is at the full.
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

• In a dream I saw
  the winds of spring scattering
  the cherry blossoms—
  and after I woke, the sound
  was still rustling in my breast.
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

The cherries'
only fault:
the crowds
that gather
when they bloom.

• The cherries'
  only fault:
  the crowds
  that gather
  when they bloom.
  • Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (2008)

• It creates a heart
  even in those among us
  who think of themselves
  as indifferent to all things—
  the world. this first wind of autumn.
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

• If not for solitude,
  how dismal my life would be!
  • Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991), Steven D. Carter

• Even a person
  free of passion
  would be moved to sadness:
  autumn evening in a marsh
  where snipes fly up.
  • Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home, 1991, Watson, Burton, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 81

Trailing on the wind,
the smoke of Mount Fuji
fades in the sky,
moving like my thoughts
toward some unknown end

• 風になびく
  富士の煙の
  空にきえて
  ゆくへも知らぬ
  わが思ひかな
  kaze ni nabiku
  fuji no keburi no
  sora ni kiete
  yukue mo shiranu
  waga omoi kana
  • Just as smoke drifts on the winds over Mount Fuji,
    Only to vanish – whither no one knows –
    So, too, does my soul wander on.
    • The Literature of Mt Fuji: Japanese Classical Literature, Chuo University (2017)
  • The wisps of smoke from Fuji
    yield to the wind and lose themselves
    in sky, in emptiness,
    which takes as well the aimless passions
    that through my life burned deep inside.
    • William R. Lafleur, Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō (2012)
  • Trailing on the wind,
    the smoke of Mount Fuji
    fades in the sky,
    moving like my thoughts
    toward some unknown end
    • Burton Watson, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home (1991)

Quotes about

• The poet Saigyo
  Would have written a poem
  Even for the woman
  Washing potatoes.
  • Matsuo Basho, as quoted in Basho, Plodding in Saigyo's Footsteps by Meng-hu, Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry, Winter 2005, vol. 3., no. 4

• The fact that Saigyō composed the poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master. He also wrote:
  

  In the mountain village
  who are you calling, yobuko-bird?
  I thought you lived alone.

  
  There's nothing so intriguing as living alone.
  • Matsuo Basho, Robert Hass (1994) The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa

• Truly fine poetry sits uncomfortably under any label. Yet, as long as qualifiers do not overwhelm what is universal in the poetry to which they have been attached, they can have value. To forbid any reference to Dante or Milton as "Christian poets" would be to deny something of central importance in the sensibilities and writing of both men. And in a similar fashion we may refer to Saigyo as Japan's foremost "Buddhist" poet—and do so without short-changing what is universal in his verse.
  • William R. Lafleur, Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō (2012)

See also

• Shotetsu
• Fujiwara no Teika
• Basho
• Kobayashi Issa
• Masaoka Shiki