Japanese Death Poems

Yoel Hoffmann’s Japanese Death Poems is a collection of exactly that. Farewell-to-life poems, or jisei, were traditionally written in the moments before the poet died, though they could also be composed beforehand, sometimes weeks, sometimes decades. Some poets even wrote several. Bashō said all of his poems could be death poems. One poet simply drew a circle before he died. And then there were the poems written by monks, samurai, courtesans, nuns, warlords, and drunks.

I thought to live
two centuries, or three—
yet here comes death
to me, a child
just eighty-five years old.

*

Where did that dog
that used to be here go?
I thought about him
once again tonight
before I went to bed.

*

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going—
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

*

No sign
in the cicada’s song
that it will soon be gone

*

Oh, I don’t care
where autumn clouds
are drifting to.

*

I long for people—
then again I loathe them:
end of autumn.

*

I leap from depths
of debt into the skies:
autumn of the dragon

*

Now it reveals its hidden side
and now the other—thus it falls,
an autumn leaf.

*

Cherry blossoms fall
on a half-eaten
dumpling.

*

Not even for a moment
do things stand still—witness
color in the trees.