![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kokinshu #156
(from the same contest)
While I consider
possibly going to bed
of a summer night --
with a single cuckoo's voice
the first breaking light of dawn.
natsu no yo no
fusu ka to sureba
hototogisu
naku hitokoe ni
akuru shinonome
---L.
While I consider
possibly going to bed
of a summer night --
with a single cuckoo's voice
the first breaking light of dawn.
—7 October 2011
Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. No, wait, the cuckoo's still here -- barely. This is the first of a couple poems on the shortness of summer nights. I am intrigued by how "night" gets a genitive/locative case-marker instead of the expected topic-marking particle, which has the effect of de-emphasizing the time -- and so plays into the speaker's losing track of it.natsu no yo no
fusu ka to sureba
hototogisu
naku hitokoe ni
akuru shinonome
---L.