Kokinshu #310

[lnhammer]

When he was commanded to present old poems in the Kanpyô Era, he wrote down the poem "Colored autumn leaves drift on Tatsuta River" [#284], then composed this in the same spirit.

    Seeing the color
of the waters that come down
    from the deep mountains,
I've realized that indeed
it is the end of autumn.

—14 September 2012

Original by Fujiwara no Okikaze. The command would have been from Emperor Uda. Ambiguous orthography: miyama can be read as "beautiful/fair mountains" instead of "deep in the mountains," and possibly both senses should be kept in mind. "It is" is another omitted-but-understood word. Because the model poem is about rain washing leaves into the river, the color is often interpreted as that of leaves, but given the position in the sequence, it seems likely the editors want us to see the river as now leaf-free -- evoking the time of early winter rains rather than the rains themselves.


miyama yori
ochikuru mizu no
iro mite zo
aki wa kagiri to
omoishirinuru

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It just occurred to me reading your commentary that maybe this "iro" is meant in the sense that's closer to "facial expression." As in, the water's no longer covered by the leaves; I can see its face; I know that autumn is over.

I really like the expression "aki wa kagiri to". Very neat. I also like all the i's and o's in this one. --Matt

[lnhammer]

Oo -- I didn't notice that about iro. That makes that interpretation seem even more likely to me.

Yes, that's an especially nice line. I don't often think of Okikaze as musical, but he could knew how to polish his sound.

---L.