I am a priest of the Kōyasan. I am minded to go up to the Capital to visit the shrines and sanctuaries there.
The Buddha of the Past is gone,
And he that shall be Buddha has not yet come into the world.
SECOND PRIEST.
In a dream-lull our lives are passed; all, all
That round us lies
Is visionary, void.
Yet got we by rare fortune at our birth
Man’s shape, that is hard to get;
And dearer gift was given us, harder to win,
The doctrine of Buddha, seed of our Salvation.
And me this only thought possessed,
How I might bring that seed to blossom, till at last
I drew this sombre cassock across my back.
And knowing now the lives before my birth,
No love I owe
To those that to this life engendered me,
Nor seek a care (have I not disavowed
Such hollow bonds?) from child by me begot.
A thousand leagues
Is little road
To the pilgrim’s feet.
The fields his bed,
The hills his home
Till the travel’s close.
PRIEST.
We have come so fast that we have reached the pine-woods of Abeno, in the country of Tsu. Let us rest in this place.
(They sit down by the Waki’s pillar.)
KOMACHI.
Like a root-cut reed,[90]
Should the tide entice,
I would come, I think; but now
No wave asks; no stream stirs.
Long ago I was full of pride;
Crowned with nodding tresses, halcyon locks,
I walked like a young willow delicately wafted
By the winds of Spring.
I spoke with the voice of a nightingale that has sipped the dew.
I was lovelier than the petals of the wild-rose open-stretched
In the hour before its fall.
But now I am grown loathsome even to sluts,
Poor girls of the people, and they and all men
Turn scornful from me.
Unhappy months and days pile up their score;
I am old; old by a hundred years.
In the City I fear men’s eyes,
And at dusk, lest they should cry “Is it she?”
Westward with the moon I creep
From the cloud-high City of the Hundred Towers.
No guard will question, none challenge
Pilgrim so wretched: yet must I be walking
Hid ever in shadow of the trees.
Past the Lovers’ Tomb,
And the Hill of Autumn
To the River of Katsura, the boats, the moonlight.
(She shrinks back and covers her face, frightened of being known.)