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Hyakunin Isshu #93
Monday, 26 July 2010 07:07 Ah, this world of ours --
would that it always be so!
How touching, the boat
of a rowing fisherman
being towed on the seashore!
yo no naka wa
tsune ni mogamo na
nagisa kogu
ama no obune no
tsunade kanashi mo
---L.
would that it always be so!
How touching, the boat
of a rowing fisherman
being towed on the seashore!
—17 July 2010
Original by Minamoto no Sanetomo, the third Kamakura shogun, writing (like #91) an "allusive variation" on two earlier poems. The number of emphatic particles available in Japanese, all of them translatable with a bang, continues to amuse me zo. That the tow-rope is being pulled (possibly hauling the boat onto shore?) is another of those omitted-but-understood words. It could be argued adding it does not actually make things any less cryptic than the literal text:How touching, the tow rope
of a small boat of a fisherman
rowing along the seashore!
yo no naka wa
tsune ni mogamo na
nagisa kogu
ama no obune no
tsunade kanashi mo
---L.