Hyakunin Isshu #16

    I must leave you now
for far Inaba's mountains,
    peaks covered with pines,
but should I hear that you pine
I will return home at once.

—23 November 2009

Original by Ariwara no Yukihira, brother of the more famous Jack Narihira. For the record, I only did this one to get the matsu = pine tree/wait pivot word out of the freakin' way. It's like how every writer eventually has to write one deal-with-the-devil story -- every Japanese translator has to use the pines/pining pun once. So now I've done it, and can move on. The other pivot word, inaba = place name/verbal suffix meaning "when go", is more interesting. It's more "grow on" than "covered with", but that would bury the first pine inside the line. If "you" hadn't been left understood in the original, I'd italicize it -- but then, maybe the diction is arch enough as it is. Original:


tachiwakare
inaba no yama no
mine ni oru
matsu to shi kikaba
ima kaerikomu (or kon -- once more into the breech of choice of modernizations, and once again)

---L.