Kokinshu #280
Sunday, 29 July 2012 07:20![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written on transplanting chrysanthemum flowers that were at someone's house.
Since changing the home
where they first dyed their blossoms,
the chrysanthemums --
especially even their colors --
have, I see, faded away.
sakisomeshi
yado shi kawareba
kiku no hana
iro sae ni koso
utsuroinikere
---L.
Since changing the home
where they first dyed their blossoms,
the chrysanthemums --
especially even their colors --
have, I see, faded away.
—26 July 2012
Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. And thus ends chrysanthemum season -- with a decay attributed, oddly, to a non-natural cause. Compare also the odd end of cuckoo season in #164. More literally, it's where they "began blooming," but rendering this freely brings out the contrast of somu, used in its metaphoric extension of "beginning" an action but literally meaning "to dye," and the fading colors of utsurou. That Tsurayuki also uses another verb for changing, kawaru, is more clunky than usual for him.sakisomeshi
yado shi kawareba
kiku no hana
iro sae ni koso
utsuroinikere
---L.