No By Lady Ki No Washika

It’s not because I’m now too old,

More wizened than you guess. . . .

If I say no, it’s only

Because I fear that yes

Would bring me nothing, in the end,

But a fiercer loneliness.

TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY GRAEME WILSON From “99 Poems in Translation,” selected by Harold Pinter, Anthony Astbury and Geoffrey Godbert (Grove: 150 pp., $11 paper)