Kokinshu #178
Wednesday, 14 December 2011 07:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer A poem from the poetry contest held in the palace of the consort in the same era.
It is cold indeed,
a heart that could promise that:
is meeting but once
a year on Tanabata
really a meeting at all?
chigirikemu
kokoro zo tsuraki
tanabata no
toshi ni hitotabi
au wa au ka wa
It is cold indeed,
a heart that could promise that:
is meeting but once
a year on Tanabata
really a meeting at all?
—15 November 2011
Original by Fujiwara no Okikaze. Back to purely earthbound speculation. I cannot help thinking this isn't really a Tanabata poem but rather using the story's trappings to accuse the speaker's lover. Either way, though, it doesn't work for me because it's blaming the victim: meeting one night a year isn't the idea of either the Weaver Maid or the Oxherd, but a punishment from her grandfather, the Emperor of Heaven, for shirking her weaving for love. "But," "really," and "at all" are rhetorical rather than literal, from the question marked as expecting a negative answer.chigirikemu
kokoro zo tsuraki
tanabata no
toshi ni hitotabi
au wa au ka wa