Kokinshu #156
Monday, 31 October 2011 07:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer (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.
no subject
Date: 31 October 2011 21:10 (UTC)no subject
Date: 31 October 2011 21:15 (UTC)You should like the next couple poems, then.
---L.
no subject
Date: 1 November 2011 17:53 (UTC)(I also read your translation out loud to a couple people in the ASME lounge. One of them said, "He was an engineer!")
no subject
Date: 1 November 2011 19:49 (UTC)I did my share of all-nighters in the computer lab as an undergrad ...
---L.