Kokinshu #82

Written on fallen cherry blossoms.

    With things are they are,
why do you bother to bloom,
    O cherry blossoms?
Even I, when I see you,
do not have a peaceful heart.

—8 March 2011

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. Following other texts, and to make it make any sense, for the first word I've emended my base text from goto ("each" or "like/similar," usually a suffix) to koto ("thing/situation"). Another ambiguous cherry blossom, either address or unmarked direct object of "see" -- being modified by a long relative clause makes exclamation an untenable reading. The question in the original first two lines is a double-negative ("why isn't it that you don't bloom?") marked as a rhetorical question, but that's awkward and confusing in English. "When" is not literal, but that's the only way I can make sense of the phrasing. The implication, re-enforced by grammatical ambiguity, is that the flowers as well as the speaker aren't at peace.


koto naraba
sakazu ya wa aranu
sakurabana
miru ware sae ni
shizugokoro nashi


And in non-translation news, my long poem "Myrmidons in Calydon" is in the inaugural issue of Eye to the Telescope.

---L.