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小鳥の歌　65

Apr30

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

Little black-winged bird
Clinging to the maple twig
Warbling in the wind
Tarry a while away
My wasteful wearisome woes

link: woe to woe, topic continues theme on surcease of sorrow. Found a rare English kakekotoba ( 掛詞 ) pivot word in “while”. I actually had to look up whether it was while away or wile away and it turns out both are correct in a different fashion. It turns out that “while away” is a vestigial remnant of an archaic use of “while” as a verb meaning “to spend time pleasantly”. “Wile” denotes some kind of trickery, which could have also worked:

Tarry a while, wile
Away my wearisome woes

I suppose I could have doubled the “while”

Tarry a while, while
Away my wearisome woes

Which actually does sound better to my ears, BUT pivoting on the “while”, which changes meaning depending on whether it connects with the words before or after, is EXACTLY how a pivot word (kakekotoba) works in Japanese.

Oh, the bird was a Yellow-rumped Warbler, quite common here in Kansas. But there is just no way to make “Yellow-rumped Warbler” sound elegant.

小鳥の歌　61

Apr11

Awake and aware
Each moment is a treasure
Just outside my grasp
My heart is chained to the past
My thoughts snared in the future

Link: aware to aware.　Also a thematic link regarding Buddhism.

There is some complex wordplay going on here. I am writing about bodhi, which we would translate into “enlightenment”, although the word root is “budh” (to awaken). Aware is an interesting false friend. In English, aware means to be mindful, conscious, alert. In Japanese, aware (pronounced AH-WAH-RE) which roughly translates to pity, sorrow, or pathos. In Japanese poetry, aware is often used as a exclamation, the same way alas is used in English poetry.