Friday, 1 July 2011

Kokinshu #106

Friday, 1 July 2011 07:05
lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
(Topic unknown.)

    Listen, bush warbler --
call out your reproaches
    at the blowing wind.
Has my hand even so much
as brushed against these flowers?

—26-29 June 2011

(Original author unknown.) Feel free to replace "listen" with an attention-getting exclamation appropriate for your local dialect -- so "yo" or "oy" for New Yorkers, "hwæt" for Anglo-Saxons, and so on. And may I just say that I like how in Japanese the question marker can go after what's being questioned instead of always at the end of the sentence -- here the "I" of part of "my" is marked as a rhetorical question. My translations obscure that this begins with the blowing winds that end the previous poem.


fuku kaze o
nakite uramiyo
uguisu wa
ware ya wa hana ni
te dani furetaru


---L.

About

Warning: contents contain line-breaks.

As language practice, I like to translate poetry. My current project is Chinese, with practice focused on Tang Dynasty poetry. Previously this was classical Japanese, most recently working through the Kokinshu anthology (archived here). Suggestions, corrections, and questions always welcome.

There's also original pomes in the journal archives.

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