April 8th: Japanese Poetry

In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, I read a lot of Japanese poetry, and started to understand that the whole melancholy, wabi-sabi ethos of it is at least partly due to the effect of living in a country prone to earthquakes.  Here's a poem I posted in July of that year.

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

by Izumi Shikibu, tr. Jane Hirschfield and Mariko Aratani

Here's another post about Japanese poetry from September 2010.

Today's line in the Progressive Poem is here.