izumi shikibu

this is the only woman i love that makes me bleed through her words

They say the dead return tonight,
but you are not here.
Is my dwelling truly a house without spirit?

The semester was already about to finish and I had been literally dragging myself to my poetry class. not that the class was boring - hell it was fun being devoured by the great almighty ricardo (my teacher who happens to be one of THE POETS in our country), rather it was more because of the readings that were assigned. the dead white males, so they say. so there I was, sitting totally oblivious of what was going to happen and completely having no idea of what was going to be discussed.

Trampling the dry grass the wild boar makes his bed, and sleeps.
I would not sleep so soundly even were I without these feelings.

then, ricardo asked one of my classmates, i think it was june, to discuss whose poem she liked and why she liked it. BEWARE: You were not supposed to say "I like the poem because it's nice." It was one of the mortal sins in that course.

Will i alone be left to tell the story of our past -
destined to be numbered with old tales of painful loves?

she chose a Japanese poem. Having heard that did not stir me from my almost catatonic state in class even after she mentioned who the poet was. (How was I supposed to know who that person was?!). Then she recited the line:

Even if i saw you only once, I will long for you through worlds world.

And it just brought me back to that small room with ricardo and the rest of my classmates (there were only 12 of us).

ME: That was the whole poem?

I quietly asked my classmate.

Come quickly -
as soon as these flowers open, they fall -
this world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers

ME: Who is the poet again?

Izumi Shikibu

ME: Is that a man?

And from then on my obsession for her started.

In this world love has no color --
but how deeply my body is stained by yours.

To think about this woman who was born in a wrong time - she was way, way to advance for her time (brought upon maybe by her own character or the situation she was in – she left her husband for another man who eventually died which led her to have more illicit affairs with other men every now and then) and the things that she wrote just crushes me.

This heart is not a summer field and yet -
how dense love's foliage has grown.

She is a woman who was capable of bottling her emotions into concreteness with just a handful of words. I, not liking long, tedious reading, immediately fell in love with her words. For even as they were short, the actually paint you the completeness of her ideas. And that’s how I define poetry – in one way.

When I think of you,
fireflies in the marsh rise like the soul's jewels,
lost to eternal longing, abandoning my body.