Kokinshu #408

Topic unknown.

    I left the capital --
today, seeing Mika Plain's
    Izumi River,
the river wind is chilly.
Mt. Lending, lend me a robe!

—9 June 2013

Original author unknown. Another poem with a plain, continuing the connection of the first two poems. All three places are south of the capital, named in order as they appeared on the road to Nara -- they still do, but Mika Plain is now known as Kame Plain and Izumi River, which starts in it, is now Kitsu River. Pivot-word: the name of Mt. Kase is also read as a command to "lend." Commentaries debate whether to also read the mi of Mika Plain as "see," mika as "three days," or izumi as "when see," with the latter especially frowned upon as overdoing things (not to mention clogging up what's already compressed syntax).


miyako idete
kyô mika no hara
izumigawa
kawakaze semushi
koromo kaseyama

---L.