Hyakunin Isshu #17

[lnhammer]

    Unheard of even
in the age of the great gods:
    with the autumn leaves,
Tatsuta River tie-dyes
its waters Chinese crimson.

—30(?) December 2009

Original by Ariwara no Narihira, writing in a manner that I can't see Tsurayuki claiming is too much feeling crammed into too few words, despite the leaves being left implied again. That said, it took commentaries to figure out that the to in the final line is the end-of-quoted-phrase marker that goes with kikazu ("not heard of") in the second -- massive grammatical inversion ahoy -- and that the dyeing is reflexive. Er, also that kukuru is an archaic verb for what's now called shibori-zume, tie-dyeing. Possibly slightly better in English would be "Tatsuta River's waters | are tie-dyed Chinese crimson," but for once my instinct is to err on the side of pedantic accuracy.


chihayaburu
kami yo mo kikazu
Tatsutagawa
karakurenai ni
mizu kukuru to wa

---L.

Comments

[ex_asakiyume313]

I haven't been commenting, but have been enjoying your journey through the Hyakunin Issu. This one I love because I love the word chihayaburu, and also the word karakurenai. Plus, autumn poem <3

not just crimson but Chinese crimson

[lnhammer]

I regret that I had to reduce the awesome chihayaburu to briefly great in this one, but meter constrained me.

I keep getting distracted by Kokinshu poems -- or rather Kokinshu-only, as most of my recent 100/1 have been from that era -- but if I can keep it up it'd be fun to do as many flowers as possible of Teika's bouquet.

---L.