larryhammer | "So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath / Love turned himself and would not enter in."

The Gosen(waka)shu ("later collection (of Japanese poetry)") was the second imperially commissioned anthology. It was compiled around 951, largely using poems discarded from the Kokinshu augmented by some written since 905 -- and as such, it's generally seen as a weaker collection. It includes 4 poems attributed to Ono no Komachi, translated below along with a reply by Henjô. Because it's not clear whether these are discards by the KSS editors (who were in living memory of her) or augments by the GSS editors (born two generations later), the attributions are generally considered likely but not as solid as those from the KKS. The GSS headnotes, on the other hand, are widely considered much less reliable, as they seem to have been largely (and often lengthily) written by the editors by way of constructing a possible circumstance for a composition, on the model of Tales of Ise, rather than received with the poems.

GSS 779. When she saw a man was becoming less and less interested [in her].
kokoro kara ukitaru fune ni nori-somete hitohi mo nami ni nurenu hi zo naki	Of my own desire I boarded that floating boat of sorrow -- since that day there's been not a single day my sleeves aren't soaked by the waves.
While tone-wise this otherwise sounds a lot like Komachi, I'm a little concerned by the repetition of "day," which seems clumsy for a poet noted for doubling her meanings instead of her words. Speaking of which doublings, a pivot-word: ukitaru = "floating" / uki = "sorrow." "Sleeves" is one of those omitted-but-understood words, while "of my own desire" (kokoro kara, lit. "from heart" understood idiomatically) sets the stage for reading the boat as symbolic of an affair -- in which context soaked sleeves would, as often, be understood as wet from weeping from over love.
GSS 1090. When she was without a regular man and was brooding.
ame no sumu ura kogu fune no kaji o nami yo o umi wataru ware zo kanashiki	Without an oar like those on boats rowed in the bay where fisherfolk live, how sorrowful am I, tired of the world, crossing the sea.
Even discarding the possible pivot-reading of nami = "wave" in addition to "because there isn't," this is a knotty poem. The original first two lines (my l.2-3) are purely prefatory, but set up the seafaring imagery, and umi is a pivot-word meaning "tire of" / "sea". Compare her drifting here with the rootlessness of KKS #938.
GSS 1195. When sunset came while visiting a temple called Isonokami, she decided to stay the night and go home at dawn; someone told her "Henjô is here" and she sent this to see his reaction.
iwa no ue tabine no sureba ito samushi koke no koromo o ware ni kasanamu	When I spend the night on top of a high crag, it is very cold: won't you do me the favor of lending me a moss robe?
GSS 1196. [Henjô's] Reply.
yo no somuku koke no koromo wa tada hitoe kasaneba utoshi iza futari nemu	The moss robe of one forsaken by the world has only one layer -- yet not loaning it would be harsh: so come, let's sleep together!
Here we get Komachi in a playful-shading-to-flirtatious mode, and in reply, Henjô gets ... well, "flirtatious" doesn't come close. Which was the one with a reputation for love affairs? This is pure speculation, but given the archbishop seems to have otherwise taken his religious vows seriously, I wonder whether he could get away with being sexually overt because he knew his bluff wouldn't be called. Regardless, this exchange is the only one we have where someone gets the best of Komachi. The Isonokami Temple may have been the one in Nara; its name can, like her first line iwa no ue, mean "atop a rock." "Moss robe" was a common term for the coarse robe worn by a Buddhist monk or priest.
GSS 1361. While strolling here and there by the seashore.
hana sakite mi naranu mono wa wata-tsu-umi no kazashi ni saseru oki tsu shironami	Flowers blooming but not ripening to fruits: the offshore whitecaps that the open ocean is putting on as a garland.
The third line has a bit of a puzzler: wata-tsu-umi, which in my base text is written with kanji meaning "crossing {genitive modifying}-> ocean" (where here wata is the stem of wataru, "to cross over"). This is one of the conjectured etymologies for watatsumi, a draconic sea god whose name in modern Japanese is usually written with kanji meaning "ocean god" (where here wata is a very old synonym of umi, "ocean"), and indeed some texts romanize the poem as watatsumi and translate it as the god. However, I note that in KKS #250, wata-tsu-umi/watatsumi (texts use both forms) is usually understood as meaning the wide sea ("the sea that is crossed"). I went with this literal reading because it produces a charming personification, but feel free to replace my fourth line with "the dragon of the sea is" if you prefer a literal person.

Eventually I'll dig out from my continuing deadlines and have enough brain to post about something else. But for now, old poems is what's I got.

(Index to this project)
---L.