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Saigyo Quotes

1118–1190 Japan

Saigyo (西行; 1118–1190) was a Japanese poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura period.

Japan
Poets

Also known as: Saigyō

Random Saigyo quote

13 quotes

The cherries'
only fault:
the crowds
that gather
when they bloom.

Let me not spend my life
lamenting the world’s sorrows
for above
in the wide sky
the moon shines pure

Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021)

If not for solitude,
how dismal my life would be!

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

Even a person
free of passion
would be moved to sadness:
autumn evening in a marsh
where snipes fly up.

It creates a heart
even in those among us
who think of themselves
as indifferent to all things—
the world. this first wind of autumn.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

How I delight
in this well-timed snow
that buries the mountain path
behind me as I enter
intent on long seclusion

Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021)

In a dream I saw
the winds of spring scattering
the cherry blossoms—
and after I woke, the sound
was still rustling in my breast.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

This is what I want:
to die in the springtime,
beneath the blossoms—
midway through the Second Month,
when the moon is at the full.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

That spring long ago
at Naniwa in Tsu—
was it all a dream?
Now only dead leaves on the reeds
rustle in the passing wind.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

That one back home
whom I promised to think about
when I saw the moon:
on this night perhaps she too
will be soaking her sleeves with tears.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

Just as smoke drifts on the winds over Mount Fuji,
Only to vanish – whither no one knows –
So, too, does my soul wander on.

What's to be done?
I thought I was past caring
for the spring
but my frozen water pipe
has made me long for it again

Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude (2021)

The pathway I marked
when last year I made my way
into Yoshino—
I abandon now to visit
blossoms I have not yet seen.

Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (1991)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Saigyo (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.