Venice masks

Monday 21 November 2022

Poem by the Emperor - Emperor Yūryaku

Girl with your basket,
     with your pretty basket,
with your shovel,
     with your pretty shovel,
gathering shoots on the hillside here.
I want to ask your home.
Tell me your name!
This land of Yamato,
seen by the gods on high—
     it is all my realm,
in all of it I am supreme.
I will tell you
my home and my name

Emperor Yūryaku (雄略天皇, Yūryaku-tennō) (418 - 479) Japan
Translated by Ian Hideo Levy
Source: The Ten Thousand Leaves A Translation of the Man'yōshū, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, Vol. 1, Ian Hideo Levy, Princeton University Press, 1981

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