Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Yosano Akiko tells it like it is in 31 syllables:

(some thought-provoking tanka I stumbled on in the library, while waiting out a rainstorm)

Friends, please don't ask
whatever remains of love.
And don't preach to me.
Let our poetry endure.
It is the cross we bear.

************

Even at nineteen,
I had come to realize
that violets fade,
spring waters soon run dry,
this life too is transient.

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