Kokinshu #464

Chinese incense (hakuwakô)

    Given there's a wind
that tirelessly scatters
    all of the flowers,
how much resentment, then,
do you imagine I feel?

— 23 October 2013

Original author unknown. The last (and smallest) group of hidden topics are various non-living things. This one, a blend of scents, could colorfully be translated as "Perfume of a Hundred Harmonies" but only if you're willing to let it be used by Lady Plum-Blossom and her ilk. It's possible to read either that the speaker is not tired of the flowers or the wind isn't tired of blowing -- the latter feels less strained, but the former is a common interpretation, and either way the other meaning remains as an undertone. The question, for what it's worth, is marked as rhetorical.


hana-goto ni
akazu chirashishi
kaze nareba
ikusobaku wa ga
ushi to ka wa omou

---L.