Kokinshu #782-783

[lnhammer]

Topic unknown.

    So it's over now --
my body falls into age
    with the autumn rains,
and even your words like leaves
have faded and scattered.

—31 December 2010

Reply.

    Heart who longs for her --
if you were a leaf on a tree
    then, and only then,
would you, obeying the wind,
fall off and also scatter.

—31 December 2010

Originals by Ono no Komachi and Ono no Sadaki. The latter's dates and relationship to Komachi is unknown; he appears in the court records as receiving promotions and appointments between 849 and 860, culminating with governor of Higo Province (modern Kumamoto Prefecture), after which he disappears. He has one other poem in the Kokinshu, showing the editors agree with what this poem suggests, that he's not the poet Komachi is. As for her poem, it has two pivot-words: furi = "fall" (of the rain) / "age" (of herself) and koto-no-ha = "word" / ha = "leaf". The late autumn rains (shigure) were believed to wash the colors out of autumn foliage. "Over" is another of those implied-but-understood words (more literally, she says, "because [it is] now") -- as is "your," though that's more readily taken from context. Whether to read it as she has grown old (or feels that way) because her lover's affections (his "color") have faded or the other way around is much debated -- the former seems more natural to me. The reply, alas, doesn't help decide this.


ima wa tote
waga mi shigure ni
furinureba
koto no ha sae ni
utsuroinikeri

hito o omou
kokoro ko no ha ni
araba koso
kaze no manimani
chiri mo midareme

---L.