Kokinshu #102

(from the same contest)

    If the springtime mist
appears variegated,
    isn't that because
it reflects the flowers of
the mountain it trails across?

—17 June 2011

(Original by Fujiwara no Okikaze.) Chigusa is literally "thousand plants" but frequently understood idiomatically (as in #101) as "various" -- and here the clash between idiom and literal context results in a flat tautology rather than clever wordplay. While "variegated" is strictly speaking not a vegetative word, it comes close to reproducing the double-meaning (if only in my own head). Per usual, the spring mist is grammatically unmarked, but probably best understood as topic/subject -- direct address is just a bit too preciously accusatory. If the final couplet wasn't actually kinda lovely, I might have gone for that reading based on the tone-deafness of the initial wordplay.


harugasumi
iro no chigusa ni
mietsuru wa
tanabiku yama no
hana no kage kamo

---L.