The Drowned Man of Samine

I read Manyō’shu

Before the warm summer sun

Filtered through the blinds,

Pausing on Hitomaro’s

Elegy for the drowned man.

Dead on the shoreline

Of the isle of Samine,

He lay separated

From his wife, his crab-pecked corpse

Rotting under the breaker.

The sea had flung him

On a bed of stones, to lie

There till his bones bleached

And crumbled into dust by

The margin of the whale-road.

Did she weep for you,

Sir, a thousand years since dead,

Whose waterlogged fate

Stings me into silence through

The verse of your elegist?

Or was it only

A month before new lips kissed

Her jasmine-white breasts

And coral-lined cheek, and you

Passed into oblivion?