Kokinshu #134

[lnhammer]

Written during the poetry contest in the Teiji Palace.

    Yet even when we
aren't aware there's only
    today left of spring,
is it easy, departing
the shadows of the flowers?

—11 August 2011

Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune. The effect of the odd syntax of the last two lines is difficult to reproduce: only one of the two attributive verbal/adjectival forms is given something to modify (a nominalizer, turning it into a gerund), and the shade he's leaving is displaced from normal sentence order to the end. "Left" is interpolation for clarity.

And that's the end of book 2, closing out spring. Before going on to book 3's brief summer's round, at starlady's request, four poems probably by Komachi plus a reply by Henjô.


kyô nomi to
haru o omowanu
toki dani mo
tatsu koto yasuki
hana no kage ka wa

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Aware" for omou - nice!

Aren't the last two lines just one long sentence, so that "tatsu koto yasuki" modifies "hana no kage"? "Is it an easy-to-depart flower-shade? (No, it is not)"

[lnhammer]

I tried parsing it that way, but while I can make my brain drop yasuki through the hana to modify kage, it then freezes up trying to fit koto into the noun phrase -- either way, you get something out of order.

---L.