Kokinshu #120

Written on seeing someone stop to look at the wisteria flowers blooming at his house.

    Rising, returning:
the wave of wisteria
    that blooms by my house --
the person who can't pass by
but must, it seems, look again.

—20 July 2011

Original by Ôshikôchi no Mitsune. The motions of the flowers billowing in the wind and someone turning around to look again are described with the same verb compound verb, tachi-kaeri, the tachi part of which can mean both rising (up) or starting (onward). Balancing the two images around that middle line is the sort of technical virtuosity I associate with Tsurayuki more than Mitsune, but the latter could apparently make words dance to his beat, if not always their sounds to his tune. I moved this fulcrum verb to the front for the clarity of a colon.


waga yado ni
sakeru fujinami
tachi-kaeri
sugigateni nomi
hito no miruramu

---L.