Kokinshu #127
Friday, 26 August 2011 07:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written on spring passing swiftly.
Since springtime started
like a bent catalpa bow
-- ah, the shooting by
of the months and years has seemed
to be just like an arrow's.
azusayumi
haru tachishi yori
toshi tsuki no
iru ga gotoku mo
omouyuru kana
---L.
Since springtime started
like a bent catalpa bow
-- ah, the shooting by
of the months and years has seemed
to be just like an arrow's.
—28 July & 25 August 2011
Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune. On to poems about the end of spring. According to Mitsune's collected poetry, this was written for a screen painting on the theme of the Twelfth Month; placing it here emphasizes the passing spring rather than the passing year -- and invites reading a plural "years" instead of that single year. The poem starts with the same prefatory bow + pivot on haru = "to bend" / "spring" as #115, here better integrated by setting up the arrow imagery. The comparison is explicit but to what is not, making the arrow another omitted-but-understood thing.azusayumi
haru tachishi yori
toshi tsuki no
iru ga gotoku mo
omouyuru kana
---L.