There was an Old Man
Of Japan
     Whose limericks would never
     Ever
Scan.

Conquest.
Soldiers need release.
80 years ago, I,
young lady, Chinese,
would've been a slave—
thrusted deep in the front lines
rotting bodies,         disease, and knives
inside me.             I am
the evidence they must hide.

Lucky me. I watch Japanese TV
and music and teens. I love
Japanese novels and Japanese comics
and Japanese history. Lucky me,
two-thousand-twenty-five,
age fifteen, Chinese.

Power flexes
downward:

a hulking, indifferent
appendage

obscene in its
obviousness,

but the obviousness is the
point,

you remind
me.

This latest one was only twenty-
six

and seemingly healthy, but no
matter—

in Hokkaido by now the
larches

have all dropped their
needles,

and the fumaroles of Mount
Asahidake

still hiss, even while
covered

in heaps of snow. I wish
that

you could take me there. I
wish

that we could set
off

into that pale oblivion and never
return,

immersed for the rest of our
days

in the frigid, accurate
waters

of Nature’s
reality.

But she has no dominion
here,

you remind
me,

and we are all just tourists in this place
anyhow,

sidling beneath cornices and sidestepping
crevasses

aslope an angry volcano in
winter,

that warm, glowing lodge at its
foot

seemingly never
drawing

any
closer.

These are modern English translations of Eihei Dogen Kigen, a master of the Japanese waka/tanka poetic form. Eihei Dogen Kigen (1200-1253), also called Dogen Zenji, was born in Kyoto, Japan. He was a Japanese Buddhist monk and a prolific poet, writer and philosopher. He was also the founder of the Soto Zen sect (or Sotoshu) and the Eiheiji monastery in early Kamakura-era Japan. In addition to writing Japanese waka, Dogen Kigen was well-versed in Chinese poetry, which he learned to read at age four.

This world?
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane’s bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last?
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before dawn;
may an untimely wind not hasten their departure!
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Outside my window the plums, blossoming,
within their curled buds, contain the spring;
the moon is reflected in the cup-like whorls
of the lovely flowers I gather and twirl.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unaware it protects
the hilltop paddies,
the scarecrow seems useless to itself.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The cluttered bucket's bottom broke;
now neither water nor the moon remains.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I won't stop
at the valley brook
for fear my shadow
may be swept into the world.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Although I may
see it again someday,
how can I sleep
with the autumn moon intruding?
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like a frail blade of grass,
I pass
over Mt. Kinobe,
my feelings drifting with the clouds.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How meaningless birth-death with its ceaseless ebbing and rising!
I struggle to find my path as if walking in a dream.
And yet there are things I cannot forget:
the lush grass of Fukakusa shimmers after an evening rain.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Living so long without attachments,
having given up paper and pen,
I see flowers and hear birds while feeling very little;
dwelling on this mountain, I’m embarrassed by my meager response.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Peach blossoms begin to fall apart
in a spring wind:
doubts do not grow
branches, leaves and flowers.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ebb tide.
Not even the wind claims
an abandoned boat.
The moon is a bright herald of midnight.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

ALTERNATE TRANSLATIONS

Dewdrops beading blades of grass
have so little time to shine before dawn;
let the autumn wind not rush too quickly through the field!
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To what shall we compare this world?
To moonlit dew
flicked from a crane’s bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: Eihei Dogen Kigen, English translation, waka, tanka, haiku, Japan, Japanese, nature, dew, dewdrop, dewdrops, grass, crane, scarecrow, rice paddies, dawn

Sunshine on an autumn day, then wet and windy
The smiles of a new born babe, and the clock strikes three
The comfort of fresh baked bread,  but fresh out of cheese
Melodies holding beauty, until tambourines

of what's a house built,
tatami mats without
figures, ghosts within walls,
haunted by the absence
of anyone of substance who calls,
ozu, can you hear me? in
these rooms of noh occupants,
transients staying only a night,
staging a performance for no audience,
except me, turning slowly to dust,
late spring in tokyo twilight,
floating weeds in an empty house,
by a projector's light.