One Thousand Summers

Nights of love unforgotten in mourning tears of a curious hue.

The poem is included in Fujiwara no Teika’s  藤原定家  (1162–1241) personal collection  Shūi Gusō  拾遺愚草 (Gleanings of Worthless Weeds), where it is found among the  twenty poems ordered by the Retired Emperor on the twelfth month of the second year (1212) of Kenryaku 建暦 (1211–1213) , as one of  five poems on miscellaneous topics :

“ Kaguya-hime said,  ‘ All I can think is that I should certainly regret it if, in spite of my unattractive looks, I married someone without being sure of the depth of his feelings, and he then proved to be fickle. However grand a person he may be, I should not wish to marry him unless I were sure he was sincere. ’ ”

When winds blow oak leaves in the twilight, the only sign of summer is the ritual purification in the waters.

Minister of the Right, who rebuilt the ruins of Former Middle Counselor Teika’s house in Saga, would sometimes go there and on twentieth of eight month, on death anniversary of Lord Teika, he ordered Buddhist services and invited to compose poems. Recalling autumn...

May I find the moon somewhere in the clouds, before this short summer night fully breaks.*

"Taichiro hailed a taxi in front of the tea house, and Keiko got in with him. He remained silent as they drove across the city out to the Nisonin Temple in Saga. Keiko was silent too, except for asking if she could open the window all the way. But she  p ut her hand on his, fondling it gently with her index finger. Her smooth hand was a little damp. The main gate of the Nisonin Temple was said to have been brought from Hideyoshi’s Fushimi Castle in the early seventeenth century. It had the imposing air of a great castle gate. Keiko remarked that they seemed to be in for another hot day. ‘This is my first time here,’ she said. ‘I’ve done a little research on Fujiwara Teika,’ Taichiro told her. As he climbed the stone steps to the gate he looked around and saw the hem of her kimono rippling as she followed nimbly after him. ‘We know Teika had a villa on Mt Ogura called the “Pavilion of the Autumn Rain”, but people claim three different sites for it. You can’t tell which it really wa

“ Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Live a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way. As Otoko approached forty she wondered if the fact that Oki remained within her meant that this stream of time was stagnant, rather than flowing. Or had her image of him flowed along with her through time, like a flower drifting down a river? How she drifted along in his stream of time she did not know. Although he could not have forgotten her, time would at least have flowed differently for him. Even if two people were lovers, their streams of time would never be the same. . . ”   ―  Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness   Kawabata Yasunari  川端康成  (1899−1972) 美しさと哀しみと Utsukushisa to kanashimi to Translated by Howard S.