![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kokinshu #66
Tuesday, 15 February 2011 07:07 (Topic unknown.)
I shall dye my robes
deeply with the color of
the cherry blossoms,
to wear as a memento
after the flowers scatter.
sakura-iro ni
koromo wa fukaku
somete kimu
hana no chirnamu
nochi no katami ni
---L.
I shall dye my robes
deeply with the color of
the cherry blossoms,
to wear as a memento
after the flowers scatter.
—24 November 2010
Original by Ki no Aritomo (c.820?-880), father of Tomonori (who mourns him in #854). He has two poems in the Kokinshu. I couldn't reproduce the inverted sentence order (the last two lines would normally go in the middle of the third line) without sounding really awkward, and while the original isn't great poetry, awkward it is not. Were it not that no specific cherries are pointed to, I'd make the third line "those cherry blossoms," if only for the sound. Note the light irony of deeply dying something a pale pink, and that back during white plum-flower season, the robes were instead permeated with the scent.sakura-iro ni
koromo wa fukaku
somete kimu
hana no chirnamu
nochi no katami ni
---L.