Larry's Pretty Good Poetry Journal

Alone in a secluded bamboo grove,
I play the qin, repeatedly sigh.
Deep forest, no one can see:
The bright moon comes — together we shine.

竹里馆
独坐幽篁里，
弹琴复长啸。
深林人不知，
明月来相照。


Language fumbling: I’m not at all clear whether “together” (相) modifies the shining (照) as rendered or is a compound with coming (来), giving something like “bright moon visits, shines.” Also, it may be a whistle instead of a sigh.

I’m still working out how to handle this stuff, but I’ve a hazy sense of what I want to prioritize in the way of form. I’d like match the original’s a) lines of equal length (though by what measure?) and b) make rhyming lines rhyme (here, a near miss with sigh and shine). If possible, make it tight, and also if possible in some way echo the in-line semantic groups (this one, the 5-character lines have a distinct 2-3 rhythm strong enough even I can see it). With more practice, maybe I can manage some of this. The original (like most that I’ve read so far) has no pronouns, but I’m not clear on whether that’s true ambiguity or poetic idiom or, as with Japanese, how the language worked at the time.

—L.

(Not that this project isn't still on hiatus, but I realized I had a draft translated and simply hadn't finished reading up on/writing commentary. So posting what I have, at least.)

Topic unknown.

    Such astonishment! --
my longing isn't even
    a messenger,
yet it has taken my heart
and delivered it to her!

—undated (late 2013?)

Original by Ariwara no Motokata, who does a bit of syntactic play that's more skillful than I expect of him, putting his "astonishment" in the middle line. The other bit of wordplay, of whether tsuku should be understood to mean "approach" the heart of his beloved or "entrust" his heart as one does a letter to a messenger, is more standard but no less tricky to render. In the end, I couldn't replicate the first and duplicated the second -- and regardless, neither trick makes this a particularly convincing love poem.


tayori ni mo
aranu omoi no
ayashiki wa
kokoro o hito ni
tsukurunarikeri

---L.

Today I heard the first cicada of the season -- almost exactly on time:


    In a green-room tree,
a solo cicada coughs,
    then starts warming up
on scales of a single note --
summer concerts will soon start.

10 April

    Along the creek-bank
as the young trees bud and bloom,
    three old cottonwoods
dressed in mature green leaves toss
their fluffy seeds to the wind.

—April 2010

While I'm at it, another.

---L.

After going to where people were picking flowers, he wrote and sent this to the home of someone who had also been there.

    Like mountain cherries
that are just faintly discerned
    through breaks in the mist --
just so am I longing for
someone I have barely glimpsed.

—8 December 2013

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. Gaps in curtains, in snow, and now broken mist. The headnote is gender-neutral but we're to understand (through the cherry blossom imagery -- that the cherries are blooming is omitted-but-understood) the person was a woman. The phrase honoka ni mo miteshi, "even dimly seen," is a singular pivot applying to both the prefatory flowers and the person longed for. As common for this construction, the effect is an implicit comparison. Untranslatable overtone: the mountain cherries on the slopes suggest a "flower of the high peak" (takane no hana), an idiom for someone unobtainable, heightening (so to speak) his flattery.


yamazakura
kasumi no ma yori
honoka ni mo
miteshi hito koso
koishikarikere

---L.

Reply.

    Knowing, not knowing --
why do you uselessly speak
    of distinguishing this?
It is love, and only love,
that can act as your guide.

—25 November 2013

Original by an unknown woman. So decoding the poetic persiflage, Narihira essentially asked, "Will I be able see you?" and she replied, "Why worry about seeing? If you really love me, you'd find a way for us to meet!" This is about as direct a come-on as you'll find in classical Japanese. Some commentaries claim that the hi, "fire," of omo(h)i, "feelings" here rendered as "love," suggests a torch lighting the way -- and maybe it would to someone steeped in the tradition of the time.

(One of these days I'll have to decide whether, when romanizing, to always treat the inflection of a nari-adjective as a suffix or, as for their modern Japanese descendents, a separate particle. For, yanno, consistancy's sake.)


shiru shiranu
nani ka aya naku
wakite iwamu
omoi nomi koso
shirube narikere

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    Isn't it always
like that in this world of ours:
    I long for someone
I cannot see any more
than I can the blowing wind.

—1 November 2010, rev. 20 November 2013

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. Previously posted but slightly revised. More wind as symbols of rumors about one's beloved, here used indirectly. This, like the next couple poems, uses an old-fashioned style of direct statement of emotions, here bound up with a skillful use of image and symbol.


yo (no) naka wa
kaku koso arikere
fuku kaze no
me ni minu hito mo
koishikarikeri

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    While I keep hearing
of you through these whispers
    from Mount Wing-Whisper,
down here near Meeting-Hill Gate
I am, ah!, passing the years.

—19 November 2013

Original by Ariwara no Motokata. For Otowa ("wing-sound") and Ôsaka ("meeting-hill"), see #142 and #374, respectively; they are close together in the hills southeast of the capital. More heavy-handed wordplay by Motokata: the oto of Otowa being a pivot-doublet for its meaning of "sound/rumor" -- I loosely translate Otowa's name to replicate the effect. "Of you" is, as often, interpretive, with the pronoun chosen as much for gender-neutrality as anything.


otowayama
oto ni kikitsutsu
ôsaka no
seki no konata ni
toshi o furu ka na

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    Swift as the water
down the Yoshino River,
    its waves high upon
the rocks -- so was my starting
to long for that person.

—16 November 2013

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. A return to the the traditional manner of #469. How seriously should we take the claim that the lead editor didn't know why he wrote something? This is generally taken as evidence that "not known" often means "rather not say" (and it's sometimes speculated that a similar discretion may also apply to some of the "author unknown" attributions). Singular pivot-word (see #469): hayaku is "swiftly" for the water and for the speaker's falling in love -- the effect being an implied comparison, requiring just a couple additional English particles to render. "Starting to" uses an interesting idiom, somu, meaning literally to "dye" -- though it's a general-use auxiliary verb, the image of staining one's heart with longing is an overtone, one used more directly a few times later on. Here, however, the stain clashes with the tempestuous imagery, making it hard for this clever and polished assertion of passion to be convincing.


yoshinogawa
iwanami takaku
yuku mizu no
hayaku zo hito o
omoisometeshi

---L.

Topic unknown.

    The little cuckoo
is crying, ah!, and sweet-flags
    in the Fifth Month --
alas, feeling this longing
whose sweet cause I do not know.

—6 November 2013

Original author unknown. Enough word games -- on to a more heartfelt topic with this start of the first (of five) book of love poetry. Just as the seasonal books are organized chronologically, so are these poems, following the phases of an idealized love affair -- beginning here with the first intimations of love. The poem is very much in the traditional manner and would not have been out of place in the Man'yoshu. And speaking of traditions, back in book III we saw the summertime cuckoo used as an occasion for pensiveness, an association created with love poems such as this. Pivot-doublet {see below}: ayame = "sweet flag" (an early summer lily that resembles and is often confused with a common iris, used at the time as decorations during the festival of the Fifth of the Fifth Month) / "(logical) reason/source." I translate the latter loosely to reproduce the repetition. (And now I'm imaging a visual novel context that allows rendering it as a "sweet event flag." Ah, technology -- you change us so little.) Commentaries debate whether to understand this as the onset of ever being in love -- a first love ever.

{Digression: I need to declare my personal terminology, all the more so given there's no consensus in English or Japanese criticism on what to call these figures. A pivot-word is when sounds are used in two meanings at once, typically one sense with the phrase before and one with the phrase after, though more complicated patterns are possible. Example: "with you gone I pine trees moan in the wind" understood as "with you gone I pine -- pine trees moan in the wind." The effect is sometimes an implied comparison but more commonly it's two separate statements, and because the two senses can rarely be made the same sound in English I usually double-translate the pivot. A singular pivot-word is similar, only the word is used in the same sense with both phrases: "I am a lonely pine trees moan in the wind" understood as "I am a lonely pine -- pine trees moan in the wind." The effect is often an implied comparison that can be rendered as something like "I am lonely like pine trees that moan in the wind." A pivot-doublet is also similar to a pivot-word, only (as in this poem) with the sound repeated instead of collapsed together into a pivot-word: "with you gone I pine; the pine trees moan in the wind." The effect is typically associative -- the sound and often also the sense of one word reminding the speaker of the other.}


hototogisu
naku ya satsuki no
ayamegusa
ayame mo shiranu
koi mo suru ka na

---L.