Kokinshu #32

Topic unknown.

    Now that I've plucked some
my sleeves are indeed scented --
    so this bush warbler,
is it singing out that
"The plum blossoms -- here they are!"?

—20 October 2010

Original author unknown. The plum blossoms are finally present, inaugurating a series of poems about them. Flowers were used (directly and as incense) to perfume clothing, and the "elegant confusion" of mistaking the scent of one for the other underlies this and the next three poems. Note also the return of the confusable bush warbler. While I haven't been commenting on it, note as well that case-marking particles were dropped in classical Japanese much more readily than in modern Japanese, even in formal writing, which I mention now because ume no hana ("plum blossoms") exactly fills a 5-syllable line, so almost never has a grammatical marker in poetry -- especially when, as here, it's as a fulcrum middle line around which everything balances. Result: frequent grammatical ambiguity, which sometimes makes a difference in understanding and sometimes doesn't. In this poem, the flowers could be an exclamation or address by either the speaker or bird, or the unmarked subject of ari ("is") as spoken by the bird. I chose the last reading. As an aside, technically, the bird is here singing, rather than singing "here."


oritsureba
sode koso nioe
ume no hana
ari to ya koko ni
uguisu no naku

---L.