Hyakunin Isshu #68

[lnhammer]

    If against my will
I should have a long life in
    this transient world,
it is this moon at midnight
that I no doubt will yearn for!

—11 June 2010

Original by Emperor Sanjô, written when he was facing the prospect of being abdicated for acting with too much independence on the excuse of ill health (becoming blind, according to one story -- he did die within the year). Written on the tenth night of the month (so at midnight the waxing gibbous moon would have been getting low in the west) as part of a poem exchange with his empress, but her response is lost. I'm impressed at his ability to get a verb into every line but the last, in the sentence final position -- I supplied the implied cupola/aru with "it is". The text I'm using writes okiyo with kanji that mean "transient/sad world" in the Buddhist sense, but some use kana allowing a double reading of "floating world" in a pleasure-seeking sense, making it an elliptical love poem.


kokoro ni mo
arade ukiyo ni
nagaraeba
koishikarubeki
yowa no tsuki kana

---L.