"Even the heart free / Of all longing for this world / Is moved to sadness, / When in the autumn twilight / The snipe rises from the marsh.” So wrote Sato Norikyo (1118–90), who at the age of twenty-two abandoned the Heian court and his position as a Palace Guard to become a Buddhist monk, taking the name Saigyo. The pensive mood of his poetry no doubt reflects the turbulent times in which he lived.
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