Kokinshu #216

Topic unknown.

    Is it for grieving
over autumn bush clover
    that the stag's cries
are echoing off the base
of the foot-weary mountains?

—6 February 2012

(Original author unknown.) Bush clover blooms around the same time as sika stags start belling, and the two are often linked -- as here and the next seven poems. Pronoun trouble: who is downhearted, the stag or the speaker? The latter is a common interpretation: "when/while I am downhearted, the stag cries, it seems," where -ba is "when" and the inflection -ramu indicates speculation about whether the crying is happening at that time. The odd hesitance over this inclines me to the former, where -ba is "because" and -ramu indicates speculation about the cause. This makes for a more cliche poem, perhaps, but one solidly in the Kokinshu manner. I'd use "foot" or "foothills" instead of "base" except that it creates a bad echo with "foot-weary" not present in the original.


akihagi ni
urabire oreba
ashibiki no
yamashita toyomi
shika no nakuramu

---L.