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He does not come.
Tonight in the dark of the moon
I wake wanting him.
My breasts heave and blaze.
My heart chars.

— Ono no Komachi Women Poets of Japan (1982)

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More quotes by Ono no Komachi

Imperceptible
It withers in the world,
This flower-like human heart.

One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

The flowers and my love
Passed away under the rain,
While I idly looked upon them
Where is my yester-love?

Yone Noguchi's The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (1914)

Although I come to you constantly
over the roads of dreams,
those nights of love
are not worth one waking touch of you.

Women Poets of Japan (1982)

I fell asleep thinking of him,
and he came to me.
If I had known it was only a dream
I would never have awakened.

Women Poets of Japan (1982)

Autumn nights, it seems,
are long by repute alone:
scarcely had we met
when morning's first light appeared,
leaving everything unsaid.

Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry (1985)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ono no Komachi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.