Kokinshu #257
Wednesday, 13 June 2012 06:54![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer A poem from the poetry contest at the house of Prince Koresada.
Given the white dew
is but a single color,
how is it it dyes
the leaves of the autumn trees
thousands and thousands of them?
(Those of you familiar with Tang Dynasty poetry probably are looking askance at my description of this as "Chinese-style," but the mannerisms that most influenced Japanese poetry was not that of their contemporaries in China, but that of the Six Dynasties period a few centuries before -- from when Japan was being actively Sinified.)
shiratsuyu no
iro wa hitotsu o
ika ni shite
aki no ko no ha o
chiji ni somuramu
---L.
Given the white dew
is but a single color,
how is it it dyes
the leaves of the autumn trees
thousands and thousands of them?
—7 June 2012
Original by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki. Another of Toshiyuki's Chinese-style ponderings of an apparent paradox. As a footnote to the dew's color, note that autumn and white are associated in yin-yang/five-elements cosmology.(Those of you familiar with Tang Dynasty poetry probably are looking askance at my description of this as "Chinese-style," but the mannerisms that most influenced Japanese poetry was not that of their contemporaries in China, but that of the Six Dynasties period a few centuries before -- from when Japan was being actively Sinified.)
shiratsuyu no
iro wa hitotsu o
ika ni shite
aki no ko no ha o
chiji ni somuramu
---L.