Kokinshu #89
Tuesday, 24 May 2011 06:54 Written during the poetry contest in the Teiji Palace.
The cherry blossoms
have scattered
in the wake of the winds
rising up as waves
into a sky without water
And with the scattering inflected to indicate a completed action, we are finally done with cherry blossom season. Onward to other flowers of late spring!
sakurabana
chirinuru kaze no
nagori ni wa
mizu naki sora ni
nami zo tachikeru
---L.
The cherry blossoms
have scattered
in the wake of the winds
rising up as waves
into a sky without water
—14 May 2011
Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. For the contest, see #68. The central image of this relies on a idiom taken literally: nagori is the waves that continue after the wind dies down, and by metaphoric extension any aftermath -- "wake" comes close to encompassing this double-meaning. To convey even a ghost of the original's effect (not to mention maintain the ambiguity of whether the wake or petals are (seen as) waves) I had to break with trying to keep the form -- it was either that or pad the language, which felt even more inaccurate. It's the really good poetry that's hardest to translate.And with the scattering inflected to indicate a completed action, we are finally done with cherry blossom season. Onward to other flowers of late spring!
sakurabana
chirinuru kaze no
nagori ni wa
mizu naki sora ni
nami zo tachikeru
---L.