"and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night"

Remember Tsurayuki? Here's translations of a few more of his poems, basically random selections from the rest of the Kokinshu that caught my eye. Most are love poems that serve to demonstrate that he's not always a convincing love poet -- his nature poems and other social poems generally ring more true when you bounce them off the counter-top,* and are deservedly better known. But even his love poems glitter, in terms of being verbal artifacts.

I am not Tsurayuki any more than I am W.B. Yeats,** but I like to think that for a few of these I've managed to create English artifacts that reach the lower slopes of adequacy. As always, questions and corrections welcome -- am still very much a beginner at this.

475. Topic unknown.
yo no naka wa kaku koso arikere fuku kaze no me ni minu hito mo koishikarikeri	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.
This and the next six poems are from books 11-15, which are all love poems. How seriously we are to take the claim that the lead editor didn't know why he wrote something? I've come to suspect that "not known" often means "rather not say" -- and that such discretion also applies to some of the "author not known" attributions. The original first two lines are declarative rather than a rhetorical question, but the alteration gives an emphasis matching the original's. Winds can, and in poetry often do, stand as a symbol for rumors about his beloved, but it read better to leave that unstated.
482. Topic unknown.
au koto wa kumoi haruka ni naru kami no oto ni kikitsutsu koi wataru ka na	Our meeting is now as distant as those far clouds     that mutter thunder. I keep just hearing of you, which only prolongs my love ...
Not Tsurayuki as his best, straining as he does with the first four lines, a complicated structure of three phrases jointed on two pivot-words: the first half of narukami, "thunder" (modern kaminari) doubles as naru, the classical cupola, and oto means "sound" with respect to the thunder before it and "rumor" with respect to his lover. Kumoi is now generally understood as an old-fashioned word for clouds, especially distant ones, but also had an archaic meaning of "heavens" -- possibly both senses are intended, adding to the complication. The vague and tentative last line (which I think can also be read as "Doesn't love cross (between us)?") doesn't help sell it as a love poem.
574. Topic unknown.
yumeji ni mo tsuyu ya okuramu yo mo sugara kayoeru sode no hijite kawakanu	It seems that dew falls even on the path of dreams:     all through the night as I traveled back and forth, my sleeves got soaked -- and are not dry.
The witty part being that sleeves can, of course, also be wet from crying -- and, indeed, tsuyu ("dewdrops") is conventional metonymy for tears.
583. Topic unknown.
aki no no ni midarete sakeru hana no iro no chigusa ni mono o omou koro kana	In the autumn fields tangled flowers are blooming     in as many shades as the number of sorrows I brood on this time of year.
Relatively straightforward, for once. "Sorrows I brood on" is more literally "things I think about," but that's a common idiomatic sense for the phrase.
597. Topic unknown.
waga koi wa shiranu yamaji ni aranaku ni mayou kokoro zo wabishikarikeru	Though my love is not some unknown mountain track,     nevertheless this heart that loses its way is indeed miserable.
Mayou can mean "to hesitate, waver" as well as "to get lost," and although only the latter works as part overall metaphor, both senses are probably intended (though I couldn't find an English equivalent). I'm actually kinda charmed by this one, though I don't know how effective it would be at convincing a lover.
605. Topic unknown.
te mo furede tsukihi henikeru shiramayumi okifushi yoru wa i koso nerarene	Months and days have passed without touching my true white bow     to lift, set, draw, shoot: I get up -- lie down again -- unable to sleep at night.
The pivot-words layer deeply here: okiru, fusu, yoru, and iru can mean, with respect to the bow, raise, set (an arrow),* bend, and shoot and, with respect to the speaker, get up, lie down, night, and sleep. It may be because I am secretly twelve years old, but the bow imagery reminds me of things more commonly symbolized with a spear or sword -- but it would be indecorous to suggest that. Left out: mayumi ("true bow") can also mean "spindlewood," which is often included in translations even though it's not a typical wood to make a bow out of. * According to one source, anyway -- I'm still trying to confirm this one.
729. Topic unknown.
iro mo naki kokoro o hito ni someshi yori utsurowamu to wa omouenaku ni	Ever since that day I dyed my colorless heart     with you, it has not been possible to think it could ever fade.
Here hito is probably better understood as a direct address, a sort of indirect and so polite "you," rather than a more literal "that person." Iro has the main meaning of "color" but often an extended sense of "feeling," so the reading of a "passionless heart" is, in the original, more connotation than metaphor.
838. Written when Ki no Tomonori died.
asu shiranu waga mi to omoedo kurenu ma no kyou wa hito koso kanashikarikere	Though I do not know whether I have a tomorrow,     for today, at least, while it is still not yet dark I grieve only for another.
Mourning for his cousin, who died before completing the work of co-editing the Kokinshu. From book 16, which are all elegies; #839 is another lament for Tomonori, by Mibu no Tadamine.
916. Written when he traveled to Naniwa.
naniwagata ouru tamamo o karisome no ama to zo ware wa narinuberanaru	And so for a while it seems that I must become     a fisherman now, reaping the jem-like seaweed that grows in Naniwa Bay.
From the miscellaneous poems of book 17; you might have expected it to belong in the travel poems of book 9, but apparently it was a bit too playful for a genre usually devoted to longing for home. The prefatory first two lines (my last two) are jointed to the main statement with the pivot kari-some = "starting to reap" / karisome = "temporary."

* Does anyone do that to coins any more to check for counterfeits? Do people even learn why something "rings true," or am I outing myself as a hoarder of social history trivia?

** For one thing, I'm not dead.

(Index for this project)
---L.