"This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots . . .
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think."
~Ono no Komachi (825-ca.900)
Source: The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu,
trans. by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, 2006]