'How the night deepens. A ribbon of frost is stretched across the bridge of magpie wings the lovers will cross.' The best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshucontains 100 short poems on nature, the seasons, travel, and, above all, love. Dating back to the seventh century, these elegant, precisely observed wakapoems (the precursor of haiku) express deep emotion through visual images based on a penetrating observation of the natural world. Peter MacMillan's new translation of his prize-winning original conveys even more effectively the beauty and subtlety of this magical collection. Translated with an introduction and commentary by Peter MacMillan