Kokinshu #113

(Topic unknown.)

    This flower's beauty
has faded away it seems
    to no avail
have I spent my time staring
into space at the long rains

—10 November 2009

Original by Ono no Komachi, about whom we know remarkably little despite a large body of medieval legends concerning her numerous love affairs and a name that became an idiom for a beautiful woman. Her dates and parentage are unknown, though members of the Ono clan held several apparently hereditary ritual offices; based on headnotes in the Kokinshu and Gosenshu anthologies, she was active in the 850s and possibly in the decades on either side. She is another of the Six Poetic Geniuses, with 18 poems in the Kokinshu.

The poem is one of the most famous of classical Japanese poetry, and one of the most-translated texts of any language. It's not only beautiful but technically astonishing, with almost every noun and verb having at least two operative senses. If you ignore (or overlook) the double-meanings, however, it's grammatically almost straightforward, which may account for all those translations. I previously posted this one as Hyakunin Isshu #9; that I haven't revised it is not because I think it's adequate (quite the reverse) but because I see no way to make it distinctly better. The implied context, for what it's worth, is waiting for a lover who hasn't visited. Sequence-wise, this seems a little out of place, as the long rainy season doesn't come till summer, but it does continue (more fruitfully) the imagery of the previous poem.


hana no iro wa
utsurinikeri na
itazura ni
waga mi yo ni furu
nagame seshi ma ni

---L.