Kokinshu #186
Thursday, 5 January 2012 07:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer (Topic unknown.)
Even though it is
not for my sake alone that
autumn arrives, when
I hear the sounds of insects,
it is I who sorrows first.
waga tame ni
kuru aki ni shimo
aranaku ni
mushi no ne kikeba
mazu zo kanashiki
---L.
Even though it is
not for my sake alone that
autumn arrives, when
I hear the sounds of insects,
it is I who sorrows first.
—2 January 2012
(Original author unknown.) This time, the contrast is explicitly with other people. The sound of insects, especially crickets chirping, is another poetic symbol of autumn. Technically, it's the existence of autumn-that-comes rather than the coming itself that is nominalized, but the effective sense is as translated -- noted not to excuse my wording so much as to express delight in the syntactic flexibility of classical Japanese.waga tame ni
kuru aki ni shimo
aranaku ni
mushi no ne kikeba
mazu zo kanashiki
---L.