Kokinshu #352
Wednesday, 9 January 2013 07:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written on the folding-screen [placed] behind Prince Motoyasu at his seventieth birthday celebration.
When spring arrives,
the plum flowers that blossom
first in my garden
do indeed seem adornments
for the thousand years of my lord.
haru kureba
yado ni mazu saku
umi (no) hana
kimi ga chitose no
kazashi to zo miru
---L.
When spring arrives,
the plum flowers that blossom
first in my garden
do indeed seem adornments
for the thousand years of my lord.
—8 January 2013
Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. Motoyasu, a son of Emperor Ninmyô, turned 70 around 901 (there are scholarly disagreements over the interpretation of the records). Note the poem's point-of-view is not within the painting, but of a viewer of it -- pulling an object from inside it into the real world. (The bulk of Tsurayuki's post-Kokinshu career was devoted to writing screen poems, during which he helped canonize the convention of a POV within the painting.) Lost in translation: the adornments are those for hair or a hat.haru kureba
yado ni mazu saku
umi (no) hana
kimi ga chitose no
kazashi to zo miru
---L.