One Time, One Meeting

Sakura at Maizuro Park

Although the nights have been cold of late, the peonies in our perennial garden are energetically pushing up. Their crimson stalks are nearly knee-high; their white flowers will soon be in bloom. That is the nature of hardy perennials and the origin of their name: they come back every year. Having watched this happen, year after year, can we still greet the return of spring flowers with the excitement, joy, and awe we felt when we were younger?

That is the question addressed by two poems written in two very different times and places. The first is a waka by the Japanese poet Saigyo (1118-1190), a one-time samurai who became a wandering Buddhist monk:

                        Hana ni somu

                        kokoro no ika de

                        nokoriken

                        sute hateteki to

                        omou waga mi ni

—

                        Why should my heart

                        still harbor

                        this passion for cherry flowers,

                        I who thought

                        I had put all that behind me?*

For anyone who has looked closely at cherry blossoms, whether in Kyoto or Washington, D.C., it may be hard to imagine not being moved by the flowers’ evanescent beauty. What astonishes Saigyo, however, is his own response. A mature adult, he had thought his heart was jaded. Instead, he found his passion for natural beauty unabated. (more…)

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