Kokinshu #293
Friday, 24 August 2012 07:04![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written when the Nijô Empress was still known as Mother of the Crown Prince on the topic of a painting on a folding screen depicting autumn leaves floating down Tatsuta River.
In the river-mouth
where colored autumn leaves
float into harbor,
might it be there are waves of
deepening crimson cresting?
momijiba no
nagarete tomaru
minato ni wa
kurenai fukeki
nami ya tatsuramu
---L.
In the river-mouth
where colored autumn leaves
float into harbor,
might it be there are waves of
deepening crimson cresting?
—14 Aug 2012
Original by Sosei. Portable screens were important Heian-era furnishings, used to partition open living spaces per to the needs of the moment. This and the next poem are among the oldest recorded screen-poems, composed to accompany to the painting and typically inscribed on it. The honorific wording implies the screen is Nijô's (for whom, see see #4), while the situation suggests she set the topic. Minato is both "harbor" and "river-mouth," but while the latter would apply to the Tatsuta, a tributary of the Yamato, the former overtone remains given tomaru can be either "stop/halt" or "dock/anchor." The waves would be standing ones that rise up where flowing water meets another body and deepen in color with the accumulating leaves.momijiba no
nagarete tomaru
minato ni wa
kurenai fukeki
nami ya tatsuramu
---L.