Kokinshu #211

(Topic unknown.)

    I borrow a robe
because the nights are chilly
    as the wild geese cry
the bush-clover's lower leaves
have, I see, begun to change.

Some say this poem is by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.

—29 January 2012

(Original author unknown.) The attribution to Hitomaro is more dubious than usual, in that it isn't included in the standard collection of Hitomaro's poems (which was in any event put together long after his death). That it also appears in Tadamine's collected poems but appended by another hand, and so also a dubious attribution, does not help the issue. ¶ Pivot-word: kari = "borrow" / "wild goose" -- something of the effect can be gotten by reading the middle line as part of both the phrase above and below. Something. (I'll readily cop that this is not my idea, but borrowed from other translations.) It's also possible to extend the pivot and read kari ga ne naku = "borrow, but go to bed and cry" / "the wild geese's voices cry," but this requires a bit of interpretive straining and, worse, makes the crying come from being cold rather than any emotion of the season.


yo o samumi
koromo kari ga ne
naku nae ni
hagi no shitaba mo
utsuroinikeri

kono uta wa aru hito no iwaku, kaki(no)moto no hitomaro

---L.