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Kokinshu #98
Monday, 13 June 2011 07:07 (Topic unknown.)
If the world behaved
as everything does in spring,
then those days of old
that have indeed passed me by
would once again return.
hana no goto
yo no tsune naraba
sugushite shi
mukashi wa mata mo
kaeri-kinamashi
---L.
If the world behaved
as everything does in spring,
then those days of old
that have indeed passed me by
would once again return.
—11 June 2011
Original author unknown, though in a later anthology this is attributed to Sosei. Absent a particle indicating it, I'm a little iffy on the grammatical relationship between goto ("all"/"every") and yo ("world") -- possibilities include "everything (in) the world" and "the world were (like) every (spring)." I went with the latter as requiring less patching (assume a missing topic marker, which is indeed common), but the former gives a slightly more graceful basic sense. The word translated as "behavior" (tsune) indicates habitual actions.hana no goto
yo no tsune naraba
sugushite shi
mukashi wa mata mo
kaeri-kinamashi
---L.