When I opened Karui Saisei, I found a poem by Machi Tawara being introduced.
With its price of four hundred yen, it became mine,
yet the rose blooms as though it does not know. (Machi Tawara)
The title of that article was “The Scattered Rose.”
Whenever I encounter this kind of repetition of sounds, I am reminded of poems by Megumi Kino, who is sometimes compared with Machi Tawara. I remember them by sound, so the written characters may be different.
Many colors in the Iroha poem fade away;
a rose is a rose, and a rose to the end. (Megumi Kino)
When I first heard this poem from my father, it had an enormous impact on me. The contrast between the smooth world of Yamato words in the first half and the succession of plosive sounds in the latter half was striking. I thought it was genius. After that, I sometimes read her poems in Mirai, which was sent to my father. That was already 20 years ago. I liked her style, which was classical, or perhaps neo-classical, and contrasted with Machi Tawara’s. My own amateur poetry today may also have been influenced by it. It was around this time that I learned to enjoy tanka not by reading each poem individually, but through the flow of several works together.
Speaking of the Kokinshu, this year marks one thousand one hundred years since its compilation began. It gives one pause.
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