Larry's Pretty Good Poetry Journal

Apricot blossoms (karamomo no hana)

    As soon as we meet,
even then I am indeed
    still more sorrowful
-- for already I'm aware
of our parting to come.

—8 July 2013

Original by Kiyowara no Fukayabu. Apricot is the probable reading, though karamomo, lit. "Chinese peach," can also refer to a, well, Chinese variety of peach -- either one, though, is a late-spring topic. One of the smoother poems so far this book, with an irrelevant topic ingenuously incorporated. Compare #372, and many love poems to come.


au kara mo
mono wa nao koso
kanashikere
wakaremu koto o
kanete omoeba

---L.

Mountain cherry (kaniwazakura)

    Even diving down,
fumbling around in the waves
    I can't feel them out --
these gems that float up and sink
every time the wind blows.

—7 July 2013

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. The longest hidden-word topic so far, requiring more ingenuity to work in. What the topic is, exactly, is even more of a challenge, as kaniwazakura is an archaic name now identified with a couple different trees, the most common being a type of ornamental mountain cherry (Prunus serrulata var. kabazakura) and the Japanese bird-cherry (Prunus grayana). The former seems a more suitably elegant topic, but you should probably read an implied "?" after it. The poem itself would, I think, do a little better immediately after #424-425 (but then, #431 also uses the same conceit). That we've met worse examples of Chinese-mannered faux naivete doesn't really excuse this one.


kazukedomo
nami no naka ni wa
sagurarede
kaze fuku-goto ni
ukishizumu tama

---L.

Reply.

    Can we really wrap
such gems as these together
    outside of a sleeve?
If you say, "That's so," well hey,
pass them here -- I'd like to see!

—5 July 2013

Original by Mibu no Tadamine. Same hidden topic, one-upped with an snarky response. I'm not sure I've quite caught the attention-getting sense of the final kashi.


tamoto yori
hanarete tama o
tsutsumame ya
kore namu sore to
utsuse mimu kashi

---L.

Cicada (higurashi)

    It seems woodcutters
are hauling out the timber
    for building the shrine --
I hear their echoes resound
from the foot-weary mountains.

Below "lesser cuckoo," above "cicada shell."

—1 July 2013

(Original author unknown.) This requires some textual history. All modern editions of the Kokinshu derive from a handful of manuscripts prepared by Fujiwara no Teika, which he created by collating variants against a base text edited by his father. Over the years, Teika restored more and more poems, but rather than mess with the sequence, he appended his additions onto the end with notes explaining where they should go. (One marker of textual traditions is the number added.) My base text is a lightly modernized transcript of a manuscript prepared by Teika in the late 1220s, the only complete edition in his hand available, with poems 1101-1111 being his restorations. According to his footnote, this should have come between #423 and #424 -- and so, in defiance of tradition, I'm translating it as #423a. (That this and the previous both end with forms of toyomu, "make noise," and this and the next are both cicada poems, thus creating actual transitions, is at least partial justification, but I'd been planning to do this well before I noticed that.) ¶ For the higurashi, an early-autumn cicada, see #204. Unlike the previous two poems, the content has no relationship with the topic -- though the sense of the stock epithet "foot-weary" is more relevant than usual. Unresolvable ambiguity: whether the timber is for a shrine or palace (both miya).


somabito wa
miyaki hikurashi
ashibiki no
yama no yamabiko
yobitoyomunari

hototogisu shita, utsusemi ue

---L.

Bush warbler (uguisu)

    Of his own free will
he keeps soaking himself with
    drops from the flowers --
so why does this bird only cry,
"Sadly my wings never dry"?

—30 June 2013

Original by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki. Kokinshu book X, "Names of Things," is wordplay poems, most of them a game called "hidden topic" though there's also a couple acrostics. The challenge here is to work the sound of the topic word or phrase into the text of a poem without actually using the word itself. This is similar how pivot-words work, only without using the secondary meaning as part of the poem, resulting in something of a word-find puzzle. I make no attempt to replicate this in English -- just ain't gonna happen -- but I do underline the hidden topic in the romanized original (though note that in modernized texts, these may not exactly match after a millennium of pronunciation drift and spelling reforms). Sometimes the poem relates to the topic -- some, as here, even are implicit riddles the topic answers -- but much of the time the topic is irrelevant. ¶ The first group of topics are flying animals, starting with our old friend from early spring. "My wings" is omitted-but-understood: as part of courting displays, bush warblers flutter their wings while perched in trees. Sorry 'bout the rhyme, but it just fell out without trying and for once it feels appropriate for a translation. Replacing "sadly" with "oh noes" would be Too Much, though.


kokoro kara
hana no shizuku ni
sohochitsutsu
uku hizu to nomi
tori no nakuramu

---L.

(Written at Mt. Tamuke when the Suzaku Retired Emperor [Uda] journeyed to Nara.)

    Although I should cut
my "patched sleeve" into cloth strips
    as an offering,
might gods who are surfeited
with autumn leaves return them?

—28 June & 3 July 2013

Original by Sosei. Another rhetorical question from Sosei. According to the court record of Uda's autumn outing, he joined the party for a short time when it passed his temple and wrote this as a reply to the previous. A "patched sleeve" was a common synecdoche for the robe of a Buddhist monk.

And that's the end of traveling: next is Book X and something completely different -- though just as playful, in its way, as these last few poems. (This arrangement was probably deliberate by way of transition.)


tamuke ni wa
tsuzuri no sode mo
kirubeki ni
momiji ni akeru
kami ya kaesamu

---L.

The Prince repeatedly recited the poem but was unable to reply, so [Aritsune], who was with them, composed this for him.

    Given she awaits
a m'lord husband who visits
    but one time a year,
I rather think she isn't
someone who'd give us lodgings.

—19 & 30 June 2013

Original by Ki no Aritsune. Aritsune (815-877) was another offspring of Ki no Natora, and so brother of Mikuni no Machi/Kaneko (see #152) and Sanjô no Machi (see #930) and uncle of their sons, princes Tsuneyasu (see #95) and Koretaka. He was also father-in-law of Ariwara no Narihira, and both uncle and father-in-law of Fujiwara no Toshiyuki (see #169). Despite these connections, he never rose above middling courtier and has only this one poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Nice try. Not as nice as Narihira's, though. "Us" is interpretive -- "another man" is also possible. "Visits" has a rare use of an honorific form in a poem.


hitotose ni
hitotabi kimasu
kimi mateba
yado kasu hito mo
araji to zo omou

---L.

While traveling to the hot springs of Tajima Province, he stopped for the night at a place called Futami Bay. The company recited poems as they ate a meal of dried rice, and he composed this.

    In the moonlit night,
it's obscure -- the jeweled box-lid
    that's Futami Bay:
it's when the dawn opens up
that we'll see its underneath.

—30 June 2013

Original by Fujiwara no Kanesuke. Approaching the end of the book, the tone gets lighter. Tajima is now the northern half of Hyôgo Prefecture; the hot springs in question would be the resort area of Kinosaki (now part of Toyooka city), but the exact location of Futami ("twice-seen") is uncertain. Rice that was cooked and then dried was common rations for soldiers and travelers. Tamakushige, "(of) a jeweled comb-box," is a stock epithet for Futami because the futa part can mean "lid." Usually this would be just a decorative phrase, but the sense is carried forward with more pivot-words: ura = "inlet" / "underside" and akate = "dawn and" / "open and," giving the whole second half two overlaid readings: "as for the Inlet of Futami, when it dawns we'll see it" and "as for the underside of the lid, when we open (it) we'll see it." The result of all this punning is something very clever that does not render well in English. To gain a ghost of coherence, I've arbitrarily placed their lodgings on a hill overlooking the bay and ignored the "twice-seen" meaning, and even then it requires pretending "its" and "it's" are spelled the same. We should set Robin Gill on this one.


yûzuku yo
obotsukanaki o
tamakushige
futami no ura wa
akete koso mime

---L.

Written on the road when traveling to the eastern provinces.

    It isn't something
that gets twisted into thread,
    yet it seems to me
that the road down which we part
is, alas!, thin-spirited.

—20 June 2013

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. Wordplay at the heart of this: kororobosoi, "forlorn/discouraging/hopeless," is literally "heart narrow/thin." It may not be thin as a thread, but parting makes the heart feel that way. This poem has not fared well with critics, with one famously calling it a "rubbish poem" (he literally trashed it!), and a medieval writer described it as the least esteemed of the Kokinshu. It is, certainly, a weak effort for Tsurayuki.


ito ni yoru
mono naranaku ni
wakareji no
kokorobosoku mo
omooyuru ka na

---L.

Written on the road while returning to the capital from the eastern provinces.

    It is so hateful,
this springtime haze concealing
    the mountain ranges.
Where among them might be
the capital's boundary?

—16 June 2013

Original by [Mibu no] Oto, dates unknown, a daughter of Mibu no Yoshinari (who had a career as a middling courtier in the 870s and '80s). (It is not clear to me whether Oto is her personal name or a use-name.) This is her only poem in the Kokinshu. ¶ Another woman returning "home." "Ranges" is an interpretive addition, trying to convey something of the landscape the scene implies.


yama kakusu
haru no kasumi zo
urameshiki
izure miyako no
sakai naruramu

---L.