lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
lnhammer ([personal profile] lnhammer) wrote2011-11-06 09:16 am

Kokinshu #159

Topic unknown.

    The cuckoo that
wore me out with his singing
    all summer last year --
was that him? -- or isn't it?
Because that voice is the same.

—11 October 2011

Original author unknown. As Sei Shonagon would later demonstrate, elegant and cranky are not incompatible. Not that this quite manages the former, with the doubled question markers in the fourth line creating an odd hesitance -- to get a similar effect, I slightly mistranslate the line as if it were two not-quite-parallel questions. "Because" reflects how the second question mark is tied grammatically to the final "is," and the voice more literally "is not different."


kozo no natsu
naki-furushiteshi
hototogisu
sore ka aranu ka
koe no kawaranu


---L.

(Anonymous) 2011-11-08 12:28 am (UTC)(link)
I thought I told you that this poem is about gourd farming.