Sleeptree songs

Four poems from Heian Japan

from Lady Ki to Otomo no Yakamochi, with a sleeptree flower and some reed blossoms...

For you, my slave,
I picked these reed blossoms
From the fields of spring
With my own hands.
Eat them and grow fat.

Should the mistress alone
See the sleeptree,
That opens in the day
And sleeps in love at night?
Look upon it too, slave.

He replies:

This slave must be longing
For his mistress -
Though I eat the buds of reed you send,
I grow but thinner, thinner.

The sleeptree you sent, love,
That I might think of you,
Will only bear flowers,
Never bear fruit.

Lady Ki was older than Yakamochi and the wife of an imperial prince, while Yakamochi (718 - 785) was a lower ranking courtier. The sleeptree is the mimosa, which folds up its leaves and "sleeps" at night. Its name, nebu or nemu, sounds like the word for sleep, and the characters with which it is written have erotic connotations, "untie pleasure".

from A Warbler's Song in the Dusk - The Life & Work of Otomo Yakamochi by Paula Doe