Kokinshu #1030

Topic unknown.

    When we cannot meet
because there is no moonlight,
    I wake up -- blaze up
with longing -- my breast pounding --
sparks fly -- my troubled heart chars.

—8 November 2010

Original by Ono no Komachi. This is not from the love poems but the "irregular" verse. While some speculate that the placement is because the rawness of what's generally acknowledged as the most passionate poem in the Kokinshu did not suit the editors' sense of decorum, equally likely it's the technique: there are five pivot-words packed into this thing, and too many pivots has long been seen as reducing a poem's tenor (by calling attention to itself as a technique). The effect of all those pivot-words (which are tsuki = "moon"/"chance"; omo(h)i="longing" / hi="fire"; okite = "wake up"/"blaze up"; hashiri="pounding" / hashiribi="spark"; and yakiori = "is burned"/"is anxious") is a dense, knotty texture of constraint, reflecting the emotional content. Though the verbal techniques are completely different, the effect reminds me of John Donne. It's also a strikingly dynamic poem, what with the passive first two lines and active last three.


hito ni awamu
tsuki no naki ni wa
omo(h)iokite
mune hashiribi ni
kokoro yakeori

---L.