Kokinshu #623

[lnhammer]

Topic unknown.

    But doesn't he know
that there is no seaweed (seeing me)
    amidst my shallows (sorrows) --
this fisherman who comes here
ceaselessly on weary legs?

—10 November 2010

Original by Ono no Komachi. So many pivot-words and double-meanings in this one. Treating some as alternate-reading puns (echoes in parentheses) seemed better than wrenching them all in as double-translations, as I usually do. As it is, to accomplish even this, I had to slightly mistranslate ura as "shallows" instead of "bay/inlet/shoreline." The other reading of that doublet is also ambiguous, as it could be taken as ura = "callous" (which would be a discouragement to her lover: "I'm callous, so stop trying") or u = "sorrow" (which would be an encouragement: "I sorrow that we can't meet, so keep trying"). That I went with the latter is not out of any conviction but simply because I could work the pun, however strained. The other echo-reading is closer to an exact translation of mirume = a type of seaweed / "seeing eyes." A double-reading I had to drop entirely: the dictionary form of karenade ("ceaselessly"), karu, can be understood as "to reap" -- what the fisherman comes to do to the seaweed; in my defense, commentaries disagree over whether this is an actual pivot or just an implied word association.


mirume naki
waga mi o ura to
shiraneba ya
karenade ama no
ashi tayuku kuru

---L.