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Hyakunin Isshu #3
On a night as long
as the long, drooping tail of
a mountain pheasant
of the foot-dragging mountains,
must I also sleep alone?
In an original English poem, I would make it "this night".
The Hokusai print for this poem is a favorite of mine, but I'm not finding a copy online. It includes visual puns like a dragnet pulled on foot through a mountain stream.
---L.
as the long, drooping tail of
a mountain pheasant
of the foot-dragging mountains,
must I also sleep alone?
—15 September 2009
A translation of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro's poem from 100 Poems by 100 Poets done with dictionaries and various commentaries, and only afterward checked against ponies. Japanese head-last syntax continues to amuse me: the first four English lines unpack in reverse order the original's stack as long as night of genitives that ultimately modify the direct object "night" of "sleep". Other translation notes: the repeated "long" is in the original, but there both applied to "night"; "mountain pheasant" is the usual interpretation of the original "mountain-bird" -- male and female pheasants were believed to roost separately; "foot-dragging" or "foot-weary" was a stock epithet for mountains, basically meaning steep, which I left literal as a poeticism.In an original English poem, I would make it "this night".
The Hokusai print for this poem is a favorite of mine, but I'm not finding a copy online. It includes visual puns like a dragnet pulled on foot through a mountain stream.
---L.