Kokinshu #190
Friday, 13 January 2012 07:09![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written while people gathered in the Kannari-no-Tsubo were writing poems regretting autumn nights.
They're detestable,
those people who'd uselessly
sleep through until dawn
those nights that I consider
entirely precious.
kaku bakari
oshi to omou yo o
itazura ni
nete akasuramu
hito sae zo uki
---L.
They're detestable,
those people who'd uselessly
sleep through until dawn
those nights that I consider
entirely precious.
—7 January 2012
Original by Ôshikôchi no Mistune. The Kannari-no-Tsubo ("thunder court") was a building in the northwest corner of the imperial compound, next to the women's quarters -- one wonders if he had a lover listening in. To make something coherent, I had to reverse the sentence order -- in the original, his delight in night come first, then the sleeping people, then his detestation. I translate oshi(mu) as "regret" in the headnote and "precious" in the poem -- no English word quite matches the range of the concept, though "dear" comes close -- and treat akasu, "to pass (time)," as something of a pun on akeru, "to dawn," (they're written with the same kanji) and double-translated it a la a pivot-word.kaku bakari
oshi to omou yo o
itazura ni
nete akasuramu
hito sae zo uki
---L.