Hyakunin Isshu #33

[lnhammer]

    On this still spring day
the gentle light shines down
    from the wide heavens --
so why do the cherry blossoms
scatter so restlessly?

—8 November 2009

Original by Ki no Tomonori, and he or his co-editors included it in the Kokinshu as #84. If you prefer a metrically regular final couplet, I can offer "so why do cherry blossoms | scatter with such restless thoughts?" which is weaker. "Hisakata no" is a untranslatable epithet applied to things that come down from the heavens, possibly related to "hisoi" = wide. I'm not clear on whether "nodokeki" (gentle, calm) goes grammatically with light or day, so I treated it as ambiguous and applied it to both. This may be bad practice, but I like the result. Original:


hisakata no
hikari nodokeki
haru no hi ni
shizugokoro naku
hana no chiru ran (or, in some texts, chiru ramu -- pick your modernization)

---L.

Comments

[ex_asakiyume313]

THIS IS ONE OF MY ALLTIME FAVORITES AND SO I MUST SHOUT.

[lnhammer]

Yes, but did I do it justice?

---L.

[ex_asakiyume313]

Your last few lines especially, and the first lines are good too, but I think I've always read it as a series of attributes for the haru no hi, so more along the lines of "On a spring day when the light shines gently down from the wide heavens, why do..." But really I think it's six of one, half-dozen of another? In any case, yours reads true, and nicely, to my ear.

[lnhammer]

I think it can be read either way, yeah.

---L.

[ex_asakiyume313]

has everything--seeming eternal permanence (hisakata no hikari) and the fluttering, unstill, transient blossoms. THIS is what it means to be alive and mortal. What a wonderful poem.