One of the wonderful things about reading old books is the way it can make you feel less alone. The more distant an author is from us, the more comforting it is to find him or her sharing feelings we can recognize.
Maybe that’s why I, a millennial who grew up in the oft-idealized 1990s, find it so moving to read this short poem by Fujiwara no Kiyosuke, a court poet from 12th-century Japan. It perfectly captures the mood of wistful nostalgia that has pervaded so much of life for people of my generation. Here’s my translation of Kiyosuke’s poem:
If my life is long,
Will I remember these days,
Even these, fondly?
That lost world I suffered in. . .
I look back on it with love.
It’s a tanka, or “short song,” a form that dominated Japanese verse from the 7th to the 12th centuries. Like its more famous cousin, the haiku, tanka proceeds in short verses with a set number of syllables each: five, seven, five, seven, seven. Because it’s so spare and simple, the art is in placing each word for maximum impact, so that a vast emotional landscape opens up within a tiny space. The more you run your mind across it, the more texture you find.
