Kokinshu #74

[lnhammer]

Written and sent to Archbishop Henjô.

    O cherry blossoms,
if you must fall, then fall now --
    for even if you
don't fall, he still won't come see,
that companion of old.

—5 February 2011, rev 18 April 2011

Original by Prince Koretaka (844-897), first met in #53 as Ariwara no Narihira's patron. Koretaka was the oldest son of Emperor Montoku (d.858) but was passed over for the succession in favor of his half-brother Seiwa, the grandson of Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (see #52). He has two poems in the Kokinshu, both believed to have been written after 872 when, following a serious illness, he took Buddhist vows and became a religious recluse. Both his mother, a daughter of the Ki family, and his son also have poems in the Kokinshu. As for the poem, yes, that's three forms of chiru ("fall"/"scatter") in a row, and without inflections to vary things there's no real way to keep it from sounding even more heavy-handed in English. The grammatically unmarked flowers could be also be the subject of all that falling, but it's easier (not to mention gives better irony) to read them as address. Furusatobito ("person from one's hometown") is often, as I have here, understood as an idiom for a long-time intimate friend, with connotations of one-time. The funky syntax of the second half attempts to match the original's inverted sentence structure and the ambiguity of who Henjô won't see.


sakurabana
chiraba chiranamu
chirazu tote
furusatobito no
kite mo minaku ni

---L.