Kokinshu #232
Thursday, 12 April 2012 07:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer (from the same contest)
Although it's autumn,
there's no one weary of you,
O maidenflower --
so why do the colors shown
on your face already grow pale?
ta ga aki ni
aranu mono yue
ominaeshi
nazo iro ni idete
madaki utsurou
---L.
Although it's autumn,
there's no one weary of you,
O maidenflower --
so why do the colors shown
on your face already grow pale?
—12 April 2012
Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. And then suddenly Tsurayuki pops up with a bit of technical virtuosity that takes my breath away. At the core is a pivot-word aki ni = "by autumn" / "(be) weary of," but the multiple meanings of iro = "color" / "feelings" and utsurou = "change/fade" (of both colors and feelings) sustain the doubling over the whole poem. I couldn't find a way to reproduce the doubling without tipping toward one interpretation or the other -- while this one at least suggests the literal meaning, it required an idiomatic rendering as well as interpolating "on your face." This does not feel like an optimal solution, and I may decide to scrap this and just go with a the literal "so why are the colors you / put on already fading?"ta ga aki ni
aranu mono yue
ominaeshi
nazo iro ni idete
madaki utsurou
---L.