Aozora Daily Translations ← All works

Sala Flowers

A remembered garden, a distant acquaintance, and blossoms returning in June merge in this brief prose poem, where beauty revives a grief that has never quite departed.

Sala trees must grow in botanical gardens as well. The one I saw stood in the garden of someone I knew. Beneath its pearl-like, fragrant blossoms there was also a stone of the kind called a Lake Tai rock. What can have become of it now? Even of the person I knew, only a word comes drifting on the wind—that they are still alive.

June returns once more— To whom can I confide my grief? When flowers open on the sala's tender branches, I see the eyes of one who sorrows.

(May 1925)