Larry's Pretty Good Poetry Journal

Written on a depiction of someone flower-viewing amid scattering cherry blossoms on a folding screen for the celebration of the fiftieth birthday of the [Nijô] Empress held by Prince Sadayasu.

    The months and days
that pass by in idleness
    aren't noticed, yet
the days of spring spent watching
the flowers seem few indeed.

—6 January 2013

Original by Fujiwara no Okikaze. Sadayasu (b. 870) was a younger son of Emperor Seiwa and Nijô (see #4), who turned fifty in 891. Omitted-but-understood words: "days of" and "seem," both strongly implied by the construction. More literally it's be "idly"/"uselessly" than "in idleness," but the latter's overtone seems to fit better, to my ear. The flattery here is the implicit comparison of Nijô's beauty to that of spring flowers.


itazura ni
suguru tsukihi wa
omôede
hana mite kurasu
haru zo sukunaki

---L.

Written when there was a banquet at the Kujô Residence for the fortieth birthday of the Horikawa Chancellor.

    O cherry blossoms,
scatter, mingle together
    -- cloud in confusion
the road along which they say
Old Age would be approaching.

—31 December 2012

Original by Ariwara no Narihira. Fujiwara no Mototsune, brother of Nijô (see #4) and adopted son and heir of their uncle, Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (see #52), was called the Horikawa Chancellor after his main residence; the celebration took place in 875 at an alternate villa. In the year before the party, two major fires had broken out in the imperial compound, and some scholars speculate that the poem's imagery may have been inspired by their smoke, but if so, it seems a politically risky allusion given Mototsune was firmly in power through these misfortunes. Lost in translation: the marking of counterfactual desire on the confusion. Note the implied wind blowing the petals about, and the contrast of romantic, fleeting cherry petals with aging. All in all, a poem equally as good, in a different way, as Henjô's previous.


sakurabana
chirikaikumore
oiraku no
komu to iunaru
michi magau ga ni

---L.

Composed [by the emperor] in the Ninna Era when celebrating the seventieth year of Archbishop Henjô.

    It happens that way --
by some way or another
    time flows ever on.
Oh, would that there be a means
to meet in your eight-thousandth year!

—9 December 2012

Original by [Emperor Kôkô]. The birthday party was held in the Twelfth Month of 885. (Not that it has any bearing on the the sentiment, but both died within five years.) Lost in translation: "happens" is in a frequentive conjugation.


kaku shitsutsu
to ni mo kaku ni mo
nagaraete
kimi ga yachiyo ni
au yoshi mogana

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    The plovers that dwell
on Sashide's rocky shore
    below Salt Mountain
are indeed calling the reign
of my lord "eight thousand years."

—20 November 2012

(Original author unknown.) Lost in translation: the onomatopoeia for a plover's call is usually chiyo, which can be heard as "thousand years," but honorific hyperbole has changed this to yachiyo, "eight thousand years." Some traditions locate Salt Mountain in Kai Province (modern Yamanashi Prefecture), and commentaries split on whether to read sashide as a place name or as "a spit" (indicating the shoreline juts out into the waters). The original is a highly polished verse, with its frequent i and o sounds echoing, and finally resolving in, the plover's call and the shi-/sa-/su- sounds starting the first three lines.


shio no yama
sashide no iso ni
sumu chidori
kimi ga miyo o-ba
yachiyo to zo naku

---L.

Topic unknown.

    My lord, may it be
for a thousand ages,
    eight thousand ages --
until a pebble becomes
a crag overgrown with moss.

—11 March 2011

Original author unknown. Thus begins Book VII, containing poems of felicitations, expressing long life wishes at birthdays and possibly also coronations. Given such public occasions, the genre is very formalized, with an elevated tonal palette and a limited set of acceptable images. Fortunately, it's the second-shortest book of the Kokinshu, so the congratulations to people one doesn't know and don't care about will be relatively brief. This poem does have some extrinsic interest, however: a variant first appearing in a 1013 anthology, with the first line kimi ga yo wa, "[my] lord's life" instead of "my lord," is used as Japan's national anthem. The action that should last eight thousand years/ages is another omitted-but-understood verb, though in the anthem version "live" is more clearly implied -- which may be why it's better known. Eight is a particularly auspicious number, as well as sometimes used as a generically large quantity. That rocks grow instead of erode comes from Chinese folklore and moss is a sign of age and stability.


waga kimi wa
chiyo ni yachiyo ni
sazareishi no
iwao to narite
koke no musu made

---L.

Written at the end of the year.

    "Yesterday," I say,
then "Today" as time passes --
    and so Tomorrow
the Asuka River flows on
and is the swift months and days.

—19 November & 2 December 2012

Original by Harumichi no Tsuraki. For the Asuka, see #284. Its name is a pivot-word on asu, "tomorrow." How to join the phrases is not entirely clear -- I read an adverb of time, but it could just as easily be an impled genitive ("tomorrow's Asuka flows") or even the subject of flow ("tomorrow (like the) Asuka flows"). Slightly more natural in English would be a comparison "like the swift months and days," but the original really does say that whatever is flowing "is" passing time. Compare the wordplay to #933, where in the Asuka yesterday's depths become today's shallows.


kinô to ii
kyô to kurashite
asukagawa
nagarete hayaki
tsuki hi narikeri

---L.

Written at the end of the year.

    Every single time
the always-renewing year
    comes to an end,
both the snow and my body
continue to ever fall.

—18 November 2012

Original by Ariwara no Motokata. Pivot-word: furi- is "fall" for the snow and "get old" for himself, a wordplay that's almost as tired as "pine"/"wait" for matsu (see #162 et cet.). Aratama no is a stock epithet for units of time that is now written with kanji meaning "like/of an uncut gem" (parsing it as ara-tama) but seems to have originally meant "of fresh/new intervals" (arata-ma), conveying a sense of something like "ever-renewing." If this original meaning was still generally known in his time (which is not clear), by playing this against the falling/aging chestnut, Motokata actually got more than one thing going in a poem -- mark him as managing interesting for a second time. (This competence makes the padding of "single" even more unjustified, as he isn't really that emphatic.)


aratama no
toshi no owari ni
naru-goto ni
yuki mo waga mi mo
furimasaritsutsu

---L.

Written on seeing fallen snow.

    When the snowflakes fell,
flowers did indeed blossom
    on every tree.
How can I ever construe
the plum and so pluck it?

—8 November 2012

Original by Ki no Tomonori. The kanji for "plum" (梅) is a combination of those for "every tree" (木 + 毎). This visual pun, which was probably borrowed from Chinese examples, is even more untranslatable than the one in #249—for while physically snow might make us "read" every tree as a flowering plum, even the worst handwriting can't make us read "every tree" as "plum." Fortunately, unlike #249, the pun isn't all that's going on here, though without it this otherwise reads like another reuse of #335's conceit. Another thing lost in translation: this has the same last line as the previous poem. Another thing that's fortunate: this is the last of the late-winter plum-flower poems.


yuki fureba
ki-goto ni hana zo
sakinikeru
izure o ume to
wakite oramashi

Written on snow falling on plum flowers.

    Though your flowers' hue
is mingled with the snowfall
    and cannot be seen,
give us your glorious scent --
people should know where they are.

—5 November 2012

Original by Ono no Takamura (802–852), a candidate for being Komachi's grandfather or adoptive father, or possibly both. A leading Chinese poet and scholar of his generation, he was a deputy for a 834 embassy to Tang China but after its first ship was wrecked he refused board a second, for which he was exiled to Oki Island off the north coast of Honshu (see #407) and pardoned a few years later. He has six poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ A well-crafted, if not brilliant, poem -- and a good example of how Chinese manners were repurposed as part of nativizing them into Japanese: plum scent is almost never mentioned in Chinese poetry. Compare #39, which was written later and possibly is alluding to this, and the structurally similar #91, which could have been written around the same time.


hana no iro wa
yuki ni majirite
miezu to mo
ka o dani nioe
hito no shirubeku

---L.

Topic unknown.

    Come down once again --
cover what's not yet melted.
    Should the spring haze rise,
we surely would seldom see
the fair snow anymore.

—25 October 2012

Original author unknown. The grammar and manner suggest this is a very old poem. Note the contrast of the falling of the snow and the rising of the haze.


kenu ga ue ni
mata mo furishike
harugasumi
tachinaba miyuki
mare ni koso mime

---L.