花世界
I’ve been reading again the book about the death poems, the jisei. It’s such a beautiful anthology, my only complaint is that the poems are only written in romaji, but, well, I guess I’ve grown used to that now 
(I will never understand why though… especially here, the names of the poets are written in kanji, so why not including the original Japanese text for the poems too ?! even for the readers who can’t understand it, they can still appreciate the visual beauty of it). Anyways… There is so much content in that book, so many examples of jisei written by samurai, Buddhists, etc., before their death.
So many tragic tales, but there is also a more light-hearted, funny part even ; when we read about the senryû poets who made fun of the situations where someone writes a death poem way before the actual death, their mouth swallowing “porridge” after having “uttered a death poem”… like the story of this man, Narushima Chuhachiro, who was afraid he was going to die without leaving behind a poem, and who wrote one decades before his actual death, sending it to his teacher for feedback.
I just love how powerful these poems are, because of their brievity. It seems to me that the good 17 moras-poems have that feeling of “sharpness”, like a sword cutting something in half very fast, that we do not necessarily find in waka because obviously they are longer (not to say that I like them less, they are just different).
Not all the poems in the book are my cup of tea but a lot of them are amazing, and when you read them you notice quite quickly that some images are very recurrent, like the moon and the mushi, a word that can technically means any kind of insect, but it’s referring precisely to the cricket here, just like the word hana who is very often implying “cherry flowers”. We can also find the mushi in the waka anthologies of course, like the matsumushi, the pine cricket, where there is an homophony with 待つ. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane explains that the sound of the matsumushi can also be an image for a woman suffering of loneliness and waiting for her man to come to her.
It was also very interesting to read that insects like the matsumushi or suzumushi were literally captured, to be released in the gardens of the Heian aristocrats. During autumn, grasses and flowers specifically related to waka-themes and topics were also planted. If I’m able to travel to Japan one day, I would definitely want to see some of these traditional gardens, they must be beautiful… (in the meantime I have this Lego garden for the pleasure of my eyes 
really a great set by the way, I will maybe buy other pieces to change the colours according to the seasons…)
Anyways, today’s poems are not 31-moras, but 17. If you listen to the music I recommend putting headphones on, to hear the sound of the insects in the background 
鳴く虫をわが
my travelling companion
over the mountains of death -
the crying cricket
in the autumn night
the cry of the cicada, the moon - and
the Sumida river
花と見し雪は昨日ぞ
yesterday the snow
who fell like cherry flowers, is back
to its water form
今日ぞ
it’s already today - I have
to wear my summer clothes, to travel
to this unseen… new world
nothing ever stays
unchanged, even for a second…
full of colors, the trees
夢なれや花はさくじつ今日の風
the cherry flowers
of yesterday, the wind of today -
is it just a dream ?
whatever blooms, falls
here is my fate in this universe
of cherry blossoms
1 : Flower field - Max Suleimanov
2 : Flower Field - Nicholas Kennedy
Notes
道連れ［みちづれ］: travelling companion.
や : this is a 切れ字［きれじ］; basically a “punctuation” or “cutting” word ; a good way to translate it is to write a “-” to give some kind of rythm. In my translation I just chose to have a different order with the words.
秋の山［あきのやま］: I’ve read in the book that these “autumn mountains” are in the Japanese tradition the frontier between life and the world of the dead.
ひと月［ひとつき］: I thought that this part was a little bit strange but it just means “one moon”, literally. Now that I think about it… perhaps it means the one moon in the river, the reflection of the actual moon ?
と : I believe it is a function of metaphor here, from what I’ve read in Shirane’s Grammar. The equivalent in modern Japanese is “のように”.
見し : I think it is the ren’yôkei of miru + the rentaikei of the auxiliary verb ki for personal past.
早 ［はや］: I interpret it as “already” in the sense of “it’s already today that my time has come…”.
見ぬ ［みぬ］ : mizenkei of miru + rentaikei of the negative auxiliary verb zu.
衣替え［ころもがえ］: first time I’ve ever seen this word, it basically means the change of clothes/dresses/robes according to the season. I’ve read in the book that the author of this poem is implying light summer robes.
暫く［しばらく］: for a moment, a minute… I preferred using the word “second” to really put emphasis on the idea.
も : even.
なれや : izenkei of nari + interrogative particle ya.
咲けば : izenkei of saku (to bloom, to flower) + conjuctive particle ba ( when / because).
行く末［ゆくすえ］: the future/path/way/fate of someone.
I finally discovered how to make furigana in Wanikani 
I hope the reading was more smooth and enjoyable because of it.
I thought that these two paintings were the most adequate for this theme, especially with how many times the death poems make reference to the flowers… I still have in my mind the beautiful, enormous fields of flowers in the game Ghost of Tsushima. What an incredible experience it was to discover that for the first time, with all the leaves and petals swirling in the air.
I have conflicting feelings about death, a mix of fear, peace, tranquillity, anxiety… it’s hard to describe. I also find it to be fascinating. We have this fleeting existence on Earth, we don’t have any memory of what happened before our birth and we don’t know either what will happen next… one of the things I also find so strange to think about is the time of death. The Universe will keep existing for billions of years after we are gone. But what will happen when the Universe itself dies ? Is there an afterlife ? What’s the better way, afterlife… or nothingness ?
Anyways… I’m tired right now so I will just go to sleep 