Kokinshu #328

(from the same contest)

    In the mountain town
where the white snow has fallen
    and piled into drifts,
might even he who lives there
be worn down in dejection?

—2 October 2012

(Original by Mibu no Tadamine.) Another poem on the isolation of winter. On its own, the hito ("person"/"people") living there would be most easily read as plural ("even those who live there"), but in the context of the previous and next poems, the editors probably intend us to understand a single person. Untranslatable wordplay: the snow, the hi="fire" of omo(h)i ("feeling"), and the kiyu="melt" of omoikiyu (literally "feelings vanish," idiomatically "be despondent") are words that associate with each other. The fire part of this somewhat undercuts the poem's tone, giving the impression that Tadamine is being too clever for his own good -- or just didn't notice that possibility.


shirayuki no
furite tsumoreru
yamazato wa
sumu hito sae ya
omoikiyuramu

---L.