Larry's Pretty Good Poetry Journal

Chimaki

    Though these are seedlings
of late-sown rice whose planting
    and growth were delayed,
it won't be fruitless to rely
upon these fruits of the field.

—29 October 2013

Original by Ôe no Chisato. Chimaki is sticky rice wrapped in bamboo or similar leaves and steamed, eaten for the festival of the Fifth of the Fifth Month (currently observed as the Dragon Boat Festival in China and Children's Day in Japan), giving something of an associative connection between topic and poem. Pivot-word: ta no mi = "fruit/grain of the field" / tanomi = "request/depend on." I replicate something of the doubling effect by rendering ada ni, "in vain," as "fruitless." It's possible to read this (by mishearing mi as refering to himself) as a lover's coded protestation of faithfulness, with the late growth being of the speaker's feelings. The original has interesting aliteration in the first three lines, which I couldn't reproduce.


nochimaki no
okurete ouru
nae naredo
ada ni wa naranu
tanomi to zo kiku

---L.

Paper marbling (suminagashi)

    But if there weren't
a pathway that travels through
    the mists of springtime,
the geese that come in autumn
would not be returning north.

—24 October 2013

Original by Ariwara no Shigeharu. "Non-living things" is an elastic category: dictionaries define suminagashi as the process of marbling paper (or cloth), rather than the result. Commentaries compare the scene of mists breaking up to the marble pattern, which feels like a bit of a stretch. Translator additions: "North" is interpretive, while "that travels" is an attempt to reproduce the effect of an emphatic marker on naka, "within/through."


harugasumi
naka shi kayoiji
nakariseba
aki kuru kari wa
kaerazaramashi

---L.

Somedono, Awata

    I leave to escape
this misery and, especially,
    the eyes of others
-- there at the foot of mountains
where the clouds rise up thickly.

This poem was written when the Mizuno'o Emperor [Seiwa] moved from Somodono to Awata; below "Katsura Palace."

—21-23 October 2013

Original by Ayamochi. I've got nothing on this person. No other Kokinshu poem is credited to him (or her?), and some textual traditions give the poem as author unknown (one lone source, which puts this above #463, credits it to "Yamamochi"). ¶ Another Teika restoration. Somodono and Awata were two more estates in the capital -- the former owned by Seiwa's grandfather and regent, Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (see #52), the latter by Yoshifusa's heir and successor, Fujiwara no Mototsune (see #349). The exact meaning of awatatsu is uncertain but the standard explanation is a sense something like "to rise thickly." The effect of first "misery" being emphatically marked and then "other eyes" doubly so is striking, and the resulting the tension is released interestingly by the antithesis of rising above the mountain's foot in a clause given its own emphasis by sentence inversion.


ukime o-ba
yoso me to nomi zo
nogareyuku
kumo no awatatsu
yama no fumoto ni

kono uta, mizuno'o no mikado no somedono yori awata e utsuritamaukeru toki ni yomeru, katsura [no] miya shita

---L.

Katano

    Like some marshwater
when the summer grasses grow
    thickly upon it,
so it has nowhere to go --
alas, this heart of mine!

—19 October 2013

Original by Mibu no Tadamine. Katano, on the Yodo floodplain northeast of modern Osaka, was the location of a hunting lodge of Emperor Kammu. Yuku, "go," is used much like a pivot-word, only both times with the same meaning: for the (non-)motion of the marshwater of the first three lines, and as part of the fourth-line phrase "there is nowhere to go." As with many pivots, the effect is an implied comparison. Like #460, no main verb in the final clause.


natsugusa no
ue wa shigereru
numamizu no
yuku kata no naki
waga kokoro ka na

---L.

Kamiya River (Kamiyagawa)

    Is my hair as black
as leopard-lily seeds
    changing its color?
This white snow falling upon
the reflection in the mirror ...

—13 October 2013

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. The Kamiya ("papermaker") is a stream flowing south through the imperial palace grounds into the Kamo. Decorative language: "of/as leopard-lily seeds" is here a stock epithet for black things, plus there's an overtone from a double-meaning of furu meaning "to age" as well as "to fall." The second half is a grammatical fragment, in effect a declarative noun, the effect of which is probably more emphatic than I've rendered it. Compare #8.


ubatama no
wa ga kurokami ya
kawaruramu
kagami no kage ni
fureru shirayuki

---L.

Cape Kara (Karasaki)

    How long ago
did you cross ahead of me
    to over yonder?
On the path of the waves,
not even a wake remains.

—7 October 2013

Original by Abo no Tsunemi, who appears in court records as a scholar and middling courtier between 893 and his death in 912. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Cape Kara is on the southwest shore of Lake Biwa in modern Ôtsu City. To my Western ear this sounds like an elegy, but Japanese commentaries don't mention the possibility.


kano kata ni
itsu kara saki ni
watarikemu
namiji wa ato mo
nokorazarikeri

---L.

Written on the day spring started in a place called Karakoto.

    As of this morning,
the sounds of waves that can be
    picked out and heard --
might it be the melody
of springtime has been renewed?

—4 October 2013

Original by Abe no Kiyoyuki. Born in 825, Kiyoyuki was a Chinese scholar (his writing style apparently influenced Sugawara no Michizane's) and middling courtier who seems to have spent most of his time until 871 in the capital, after which he served in various provincial posts and governancies until his death in 900. He has two poems in the Kokinshu, the other which (#556) is a flirtation sent to Ono no Komachi. (His daughter also has a poem, #1055.) ¶ The third group of topics are all place names, organized by a general but not consistent progression from outside to within the capital. Karakoto, which is the hidden topic, is in modern Okayana Prefecture on the shore of the Inland Sea -- the poem's musical metaphor plays off its literal meaning, "Chinese koto" or zither. Lost in translation: "spring" was the name of a note in (one of?) the traditional music scale. "Picked out" (translating koto ni, "especially") attempts to re-introduce some of this wordplay.


nami no oto no
kesa kara koto ni
kikoyuru wa
haru no shirabe ya
aratamaruramu

---L.

Bamboo grass, pine, loquat, banana leaf (sasa, matsu, biwa, bashôba)

    While I carelessly
waited for his time to come,
    the day has ended
-- even though that person knows
the true state of my feelings.

—10 September 2013

Original by the Ki Wet-Nurse. The parentage, personal name, and dates of this daughter of the Ki family are unknown, but she was wet-nurse (menoto) to Emperor Yôzei (b. 869) so she was born probably around 850, and she received promotions in rank in 877 and 882 at the start and end of his reign. She has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Textual issue: my base text has the non-word isazame in the first line, which is universally emended to isasame ("careless"/"without attention"). The plants arc wraps up with a couple show-off poems using multiple hidden topics, listed in the order used. Seasonality is all over the place with this one, and probably isn't worth detailing anyway any more, though some commentaries note these four may be linked by all having been used medicinally. "Of my feelings" is interpretive, as are "for his" and "to come," and "knows" is more literally "can see."

Question for those without Japanese: would it add anything if I highlighted the meanings of the words the topics are hidden in?


isasame ni
toki matsu ma ni zo
hi wa henuru
kokorobase o-ba
hito ni mietsutsu

---L.

River bamboo (kawatake)

    As the night deepens,
it rises to the zenith.
    Blow back and return
to us the eternal moon,
O mountain winds of autumn!

—1 September 2013

Original by Prince Kagenori, a grandson of Emperor Montoku. His birthdate unknown but given his father, Prince Kore'eda (a younger brother of Koretaka (see #74)), lived 846–868, he must have been born in the 860s. He last appears in court records in 897 as a middling courtier, and has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ The kawatake could generically mean bamboo growing on a riverbank or refer specifically to either the timber bamboo or Simon bamboo of the previous, so called because they were planted by the water in the imperial gardens. Like the previous poem, it's a summer topic for an autumn poem. I like the irony of using a stock epithet that probably means "everlasting" for a moon whose change is being complained about. There's also some wordplay in the repetition of forms of fuku meaning "get old" for the night and "blow" for the wind.


sayo fukete
nakaba takeyuku
hisakata no
tsuki fukikaese
aki no yamakaze

---L.

Hanging moss (sagarigoke)

    The flowers' color
heightens to what is only
    a single peak bloom,
yet the dew is dyeing them
over and over again.

—30 August 2013

Original by Tokamuko no Toshiharu. His dates and parentage are unknown, but he had a career as a middling courtier from the 890s through 920s. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ The moss, today called saruogase, is a hanging tree-lichen of genus Usnea, probably specifically Usnea longissima. It doesn't seem to have a seasonality, but the poem itself is apparently autumnal. The Japanese words for the "deep" of a color and "peak" of a bloom don't have literal senses as opposed as they are in English, but they don't exactly work together either (the semantic domains are "thick" and "being in front"). To avoid sounding completely paradoxical, I slightly mistranslate the former as "heighten," even though this makes them more parallel than they really are.


hana no iro wa
tada hito sakari
kokeredemo
kaesugaesu zo
tsuyu wa somekeru

---L.