Kokinshu #402

[lnhammer]

(Topic unknown.)

    With things looking dark,
I wish it fell anyway.
    Then I would hang
the soaked clothes on the spring rains
and so detain my lord here.

—2 June 2013

(Original author unknown.) Textual issue: in l.2 I've emended the goto of my base text to koto for the same reasons as in #82. The speaker is almost certainly a woman talking to or about her lover, given a higher-level courtier wouldn't be making visits to a lower one. Nurekinu kisete means literally "making (someone) wear soaked clothing" but idiomatically "putting the blame on (someone)," often especially to frame them -- and both meanings are relevant here. English can almost reproduce this double meaning, if not quite idiomatically. Kakikurashi also has a double-meaning, to get dark from being overcast and to be depressed.


kakikurashi
koto wa furanamu
harusame ni
nureginu kisete
kimi o todomemu

---L.