Larry's Pretty Good Poetry Journal

Written while lingering in the shelter of trees at Urin Temple.

    Here under a tree
visited by the most lonely,
    the shelter I once
relied upon is no more --
the autumn leaves are scattered.

—15-19 August 2012

Original by Henjô. For Urin, see #75. Because Henjô's friend Tsuneyasu (see #95) died there in 869, giving Henjô control of the temple, this is sometimes read as a lament for his death. Since some sort of personal statement seems likely, given Henjô's connection to Urin, "I" is as good a guess as for the omitted subject.


wabibito no
wakite tachiyoru
ko no moto wa
tanomu kage naku
momiji chirikeri

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    That the blowing winds
appeared variegated
    is because they are --
when the leaves of the trees
of autumn scatter about.

—12 August 2012

(Original author unknown.) Same idiomatic use of chigusa as "various" as in #102, but here the wordplay is better integrated into the conceit. The effect of the somewhat indirect syntax of the second half is difficult to reproduce without sounding windy -- which the original does not. The original also has nice sonics, and I like the implied image of leaves whirling about through the forest.


fuku kaze no
iro no chigusa ni
mietsuru wa
aki no ko no ha no
chireba narikeri

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    Shall I push through them
to visit you once again?
    -- for all that I look,
the colored autumn leaves have
fallen and concealed the path.

—7 August 2012

(Original author unknown.) Set by the editors as a response to the previous -- to bring this out, I added an interpretive "you" that I'd likely leave out if detached from this context. Regardless, it's poor excuse-making, weakened all the more by being ambiguously marked as possibly a rhetorical question (and they, as a rule, expect a negative answer).


fumiwakete
sara ni ya towamu
momijiba no
furikakushiteshi
michi to minagara

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    Like the autumn leaves
that could not stay but scattered
    in the autumn winds,
course determined by others,
it is I who is wretched.

—5 August 2012

(Original author unknown.) More literally, the fourth line is "not deciding (one's) course," but adding an active agent lets the clause, like the original, apply to both the leaves above it and the speaker below. In any case, this is not only a seasonal poem but could just as easily be a poem of parting (leaving for or from an assigned posting) from book VIII or a lament by woman abandoned by a lover who tired (a double-meaning of aki, "autumn") of her.


akikaze ni
aezu chirinuru
momijiba no
yukue sadamenu
ware zo kanashiki

---L.

(Topic unknown.)

    Colored autumn leaves
drift on Tatsuta River.
    On Mt. Mimuro
consecrated to the gods
winter rains must be falling.

Otherwise:

    Colored autumn leaves
drift on Asuka River.

—22 July 2012

(Original author unknown.) A very popular poem, collected in multiple anthologies. There is a Mimuro in Kannabi district close to the Tatsuta upstream of Nara, but it's ambiguous whether to understand mimuro and kannabi as those places or generically as "where the gods reside" and "consecrated to the gods." Reading both as generic gives a highly sacred unspecified mountain, while both as specific loses all sacred connotations. The Asuka variant (another river near Nara) seems to derive from a similar poem in the Man'yoshu. In the generation after the Kokinshu an attribution to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro surfaced, possibly because of the Man'yoshu connection, and in Tales of Yamato, this and #283 are given as an exchange, in the reverse order, between Hitomaro and Emperor Heizei -- even though the two lived a century apart. In response, some Kokinshu textual traditions, though not my base text, specifically deny this attribution. Compare the leaves on the river to spring versions such as #118.


tatsutagawa
momijiba nagaru
kannabi no
mimuro no yama ni
shigure fururashi

mata wa,

asukagawa
momijiba nagaru

---L.

Written in seclusion in a mountain village, having not served at court for a long time.

    The autumn leaves fenced
by cliffs in the mountain deeps
    must have scattered
-- there's never a time they see
the light of the shining sun.

—21 July 2012

Original by Fujiwara no Sekio (815–853), whose up-and-down career included stints in the imperial household and a governorship of a far-eastern province in what's now the Tokyo area. He was noted in his day as musician and calligrapher, and for a love of the hills east of the capital that resulted in the sobriquet Gentleman of the Eastern Mountains -- his estate there became Zenrin Temple after his death. He has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ Given that headnote and Sekio's history, the leaves are usually read as symbolic of himself out of the light of imperial favor.


okuyama no
iwagaki momiji
chirinubeshi
teru hi no hikari
miru toki nakute

---L.

Written on transplanting chrysanthemum flowers that were at someone's house.

    Since changing the home
where they first dyed their blossoms,
    the chrysanthemums --
especially even their colors --
have, I see, faded away.

—26 July 2012

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. And thus ends chrysanthemum season -- with a decay attributed, oddly, to a non-natural cause. Compare also the odd end of cuckoo season in #164. More literally, it's where they "began blooming," but rendering this freely brings out the contrast of somu, used in its metaphoric extension of "beginning" an action but literally meaning "to dye," and the fading colors of utsurou. That Tsurayuki also uses another verb for changing, kawaru, is more clunky than usual for him.


sakisomeshi
yado shi kawareba
kiku no hana
iro sae ni koso
utsuroinikere

---L.

A poem from the poetry contest at the house of Prince Koresada.

    We indeed do see
the autumn chrysanthemums
    changing colors
as flowers that are splendid
twice within a single year.

—6 July 2012

Original author unknown. Following the usual Kokinshu progression, after blooming comes fading. White chrysanthemums turn purplish/reddish before they wither, a shade this and the next poem admire. Contrast with #131.


iro kawaru
aki no kiku o-ba
hitotose ni
futatabi niou
hana to koso mire

Written on seeing a chrysanthemum flower while thinking about transience in this world of ours.

    While they're still splendid,
these chrysanthemums of autumn,
    given it's not known
whether I'll precede the flowers,
I'll adorn myself with them.

—19 July 2012

Original by Ki no Tsurayuki. Back to the longevity theme. To reproduce something of Tsurayuki's smoothness, I re-ordered the clauses more than usual, though this has the side-effect of emphasizing the flowers more than the limit of their blooming. Exactly what he would do ahead of the flowers is left unstated, and required supplying a verb. Confession: I do not understand how a perfective inflection combines with what looks like a volitional one -- "I would have" would be another conjugation (I think). My rendering assumes the perfective is basically acting as an emphatic form, but that's a guess.


aki no kiku
niou kagiri wa
kazashitemu
hana yori saki to
shiranu waga mi o

---L.

Written on a depiction of a person waiting among chrysanthemum flowers for someone.

    Waiting for someone,
I kept glancing at the flowers --
    mistaking them for
nothing so much as his sleeves
white as mulberry-bark cloth.

—8 July 2012

Original by Ki no Tomonori. Another apparently from the same contest, written about another model. The POV isn't as clear-cut as the previous, but the person within the model is the easiest reading. In contrast to #22, the stock epithet shiratae no is just a fancy way of saying "white." Scholars have speculated that this may have been inspired by a verse by Tao Qian, a fifth-century Chinese poet admired in Japan, and as well pointed out not much is gained by the allusion aside from a spot of learnedness.


hana mitsutsu
hito matsu toki wa
shirotae no
sode ka to nomi zo
ayamatarekeru

---L.