Hyakunin Isshu #19

    To pass through this life
not meeting even for a time
    as short as the joints
of reeds on Naniwa's shore --
is that what you are saying?

—4 March 2010

Original by Lady Ise, another Japanese poetry's famous lovers -- all of whom seem to be masters of elegant sarcasm. Ma can be both a period of time and an extent of space, so the comparison makes a little more sense in Japanese, and awade apparently should be read as awanai de, "without meeting". "Saying" is another one of those omitted-but-needed-for-understanding words -- it washed out with the tide, leaving behind only its quotative to.


naniwagata
mijikaki ashi no
fushi no ma mo
awade kono yo o
sugushite yo to ya

---L.