Hyakunin Isshu #67

[lnhammer]

    Ah, but with your arm
as my pillow for no more
    than a spring night's dream,
I'd regret how pointlessly
my reputation would fall.

—4 June 2010

Original by Suô no Naishi, a daughter of a governor of Suô Province and lady-in-waiting (naishi) to a couple emperors; her personal name is recorded as Nakako (unless it was pronounced Chushi). Composed as a quick response to a courtier who playfully offered his arm for a pillow (normally an intimate act) when she was tired one moonlit evening. Literally, she worries that her name would "stand" (tatsu in a supposative form), but as that idiom doesn't work in English, not even as "stand out," I grabbed another image from the same metaphoric domain. Not translated is the possible pivot kainaku = pointlessly / kaina = arm, as syntactically the text already has enough arms.


haru no yo no
yume bakari naru
tamakura ni
kainaku tatan
na koso oshikere

---L.