Kokinshu #268

[lnhammer]

Poem attached to a chrysanthemum planted in someone's garden.

    If planted this way,
even were there no autumn,
    wouldn't it still bloom?
-- and though its flowers may scatter,
would the root wither as well?

—19 June & 2 July 2012

Original by Ariwara no Narihira. The start of a digression on late-autumn chrysanthemums -- which at the time meant a species of short white asters (Chrysantemum morifolium) rather than the showy modern varieties. Even more than usual for Narihira, this is dense with conditionals and subjunctives and unclear referents, while the rhetorical question is strongly marked as demanding a negative answer. In the headnote, it's not clear whether the planting was before or after the poem was tied on -- the latter is the traditional reading. I am, however, amused by how the first line's literal meaning comes pretty darn close to "if it's planted like a planted thing" -- sometimes, modern slang is older than you think; I am guessing that this "way" of a planted thing is to be well-planted, but beyond that, Narihira's tissue of meaning tears in my clumsy hands.


ueshi ueba
aki naki toki ya
sakazaramu
hana koso chirame
ne sae kareme ya

---L.