o moon

Just a little late-night one, tonight, but it sings.

The way I must enter
leads through darkness to darkness—
O moon above the mountains' rim,
please shine a little farther
on my path.

—Izumi Shikibu (b. approx. 976), translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, from The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Count of Japan (Vintage, 1990). This is believed to have been her last poem, written on her deathbed, and it makes me feel things.