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Kokinshu #339
Wednesday, 28 November 2012 07:04 Written at the end of the year.
Every single time
the always-renewing year
comes to an end,
both the snow and my body
continue to ever fall.
aratama no
toshi no owari ni
naru-goto ni
yuki mo waga mi mo
furimasaritsutsu
---L.
Every single time
the always-renewing year
comes to an end,
both the snow and my body
continue to ever fall.
—18 November 2012
Original by Ariwara no Motokata. Pivot-word: furi- is "fall" for the snow and "get old" for himself, a wordplay that's almost as tired as "pine"/"wait" for matsu (see #162 et cet.). Aratama no is a stock epithet for units of time that is now written with kanji meaning "like/of an uncut gem" (parsing it as ara-tama) but seems to have originally meant "of fresh/new intervals" (arata-ma), conveying a sense of something like "ever-renewing." If this original meaning was still generally known in his time (which is not clear), by playing this against the falling/aging chestnut, Motokata actually got more than one thing going in a poem -- mark him as managing interesting for a second time. (This competence makes the padding of "single" even more unjustified, as he isn't really that emphatic.)aratama no
toshi no owari ni
naru-goto ni
yuki mo waga mi mo
furimasaritsutsu
---L.