Kokinshu #938

Written in reply when Fun'ya no Yasuhide was appointed Secretary of Three-Rivers Province, and sent to her, "Won't you come tour the provinces?"

    Lonely and, thus, sad
I feel like a duckweed plant
    that would break its roots
and float away downstream --
were there waters that enticed me.

—14 January 2011

Original by Ono no Komachi. For Yasuhide, see #8. Three-Rivers (which I wouldn't normally translate, but Komachi plays off the name) is the literal meaning of Mikawa Province, the eastern half of modern Aichi Prefecture, and Secretary was the third-ranking provincial official. Duckweed (ukikusa, lit. "floating grass," and which is indeed lightly rooted) was used in Chinese poetry as a metaphor for travel, here also repurposed via a pivot-word on uki="sadness" as a symbol for emotional detachment. "Like" is not explicit in the original but the effect of the pivot is a direct comparison. Yasuhide's playful invitation, as it is usually interpreted, provoked a playful response that's also melancholy -- a startling trick, making this poem difficult to translate with anything resembling adequacy.


wabinureba
mi o ukikusa no
ne o taete
sasou mizu araba
inamu to zo omou

---L.