Kokinshu #325
Wednesday, 31 October 2012 07:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written in his lodgings when he had gone to the Nara Capital.
The white snows of
beautiful Mt. Yoshino
must be piling up --
in the fallen capital
it grows increasingly cold.
Bonus amusement: a wood-block print, inscribed with this poem, of repairing a shôji screen, presumably in preparation for winter.
miyoshino no
yama no shirayuki
tsumorurashi
furusato samuku
narimasaru nari
---L.
The white snows of
beautiful Mt. Yoshino
must be piling up --
in the fallen capital
it grows increasingly cold.
—27 September 2012
Original by Sakanoue no Korenori. A multiply anthologized poem that in the Heian period was considered Korenori's best -- though by medieval times, his #332 was preferred. Literally, it's the "old town" that gets cold, but given the headnote, the association with the former capital of Nara, abandoned a century before, is clearly intended (compare #90 and #321); normally, the furu of furusato means "fall" only for precipitation, but the opportunity to bring out this association made the pun too good to pass up.Bonus amusement: a wood-block print, inscribed with this poem, of repairing a shôji screen, presumably in preparation for winter.
miyoshino no
yama no shirayuki
tsumorurashi
furusato samuku
narimasaru nari
---L.