Kokinshu #59
Tuesday, 1 February 2011 07:32![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Composed when the emperor commanded a poem be presented.
The cherry blossoms
seem to have flowered at last:
white clouds
seen in the steep-sloped gorges
of the foot-weary mountains.
sakurabana
sakinikerashi na
ashibiki no
yama no kai yori
miyuru shirakumo
---L.
The cherry blossoms
seem to have flowered at last:
white clouds
seen in the steep-sloped gorges
of the foot-weary mountains.
—1-3 November 2010
Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. When Tsurayuki uses a stock epithet, he often makes it pull more weight than the merely decorative, and here ashibiki no (original meaning uncertain but generally understood as something like "foot-dragging" or "foot-weary") modifying the mountains does indeed add a general sense of "rugged" to the gorges, which are unmodified in the original. As for why pink cherry blossoms (sakura-iro is a light pink color) are seen as white, apparently mountain varieties are paler. In classical Japanese verbs of existence and copulas tended to be dropped, leaving just a noun phrase, even more than in modern usage, so this would probably have been understood as "(there are) white clouds" -- but since we understand that in English as well, I left it literal. Besides, I like the emphasis of the short line.sakurabana
sakinikerashi na
ashibiki no
yama no kai yori
miyuru shirakumo
---L.