Kokinshu #474

[lnhammer]

(Topic unknown.)

    Over and over --
My heart's fixed on that person:
    even when elsewhere
I am thinking, "how precious!"
-- like white waves in the offing.

—20 November 2013

(Original by Ariwara no Motokata.) To my surprise, Motokata again manages to achieve not bad -- no better than ye standard Kokinshu poem, but competent. (That puts him at 2 out of, um, I think it's 9 so far.) Pivot-word: okitsu means "set" one's heart upon / "off-shore," and the latter sense forms an image association with "white waves" and "repeatedly." The effect of bracketing the main statement with those last two phrases, which ordinarily would make a preface, is not readily reproducible in English but is important enough to warrant scrambling the main statement in the attempt.


tachikaeri
aware to zo omou
yoso nite mo
hito ni kokoro o
okitsu shiranami

---L.