Footsteps in the Snow: A Poem By Lady Izumi

For my birthday, I picked up a great book on poetry by the 12th century lady-in-waiting, Lady Izumi: The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Onono Komachi and Izumi Shikibu by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani. Her name in Japanese is izumi shikibu (和泉式部) by the way. Lady Izumi’s life has been an interest of mine, and I was happy to find good quality translation of her works.¹ The book has a collection of her poems spanning various topics, including this one for winter:

Because the old Heian Period aristocracy was such a closed society, and the public scrutinized everything you said and did, romantic meetings often took at night, and only after careful arrangement. Lady Izumi, according to the translators, was likely stood up for some reason after waiting all night, but she tries to take it in stride with this poem.

¹ The best part about the book is that each poem comes with the original Japanese at the end of the book, so you can recite it as is, or look it up in Japanese.