Kokinshu #84
Thursday, 12 May 2011 07:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Written on cherry blossoms falling.
From the wide heavens
gentle light is shining down,
so on this spring day
why do the cherry blossoms
scatter with such restless hearts?
hisakata no
hikari nodokeki
haru no hi ni
shizugokoro naku
hana no chiruramu
---L.
From the wide heavens
gentle light is shining down,
so on this spring day
why do the cherry blossoms
scatter with such restless hearts?
—8 November 2009, rev 20 March 2010, 10 March 2011.
Original by Ki no Tomonori. Previously posted (though since revised) as Hyakunin Isshu #33. Hisakata no is a untranslatable stock epithet applied to things in or descending from the sky, possibly related to hisoi ("broad/wide"). The original poem has just "flowers," but it's "cherry blossoms" in the headnote -- and at this point could hardly be anything else. The original, as usual for Tomonori, is lovely -- with its repeated h and k sounds. Shaping the progression of English vowels produces only a pale imitation of the effect.hisakata no
hikari nodokeki
haru no hi ni
shizugokoro naku
hana no chiruramu
---L.