Sore to naku

それとなく/紅き花みな/友にゆずり
　　　そむきて泣きて/忘れ草つむ
(山川登美子 1879-1909)

sore to naku / akaki hana mina / tomo ni yuzuri
　　　somukite nakite / wasuregusa tsumu
(Yamakawa Tomiko 1879-1909)

discreetly leaving
my friend all
the red flowers:
　　　turning, crying
　　　I pick forgetting grass


First of all there's an alternate translation on this page (scroll down). As usual, where there's no romaji version I didn't find this until after my own translation attempt, and it's tough to argue with Kenneth Rexroth and a Japanese collaborator. Still, 'tomo' sounds to me more like 'friend' than 'lover' if we leave out what we know about real-world relationships (though I do acknowledge that it may have had different connotations at the time of writing). As for other subtexts, this Japanese website states unequivocally, the 'friend' is Yosano Akiko and the 'red flowers' represent Yosano Tekkan. In other words, Yamakawa stepped aside to let Yosano Akiko marry Yosano Tekkan.

At the end of the poem, there is a mention of 'wasuregusa' (literally forget-grass) a commonly occurring flower in Japanese poetry, symbolising sadness and wanting to forget (briefly mentioned at the bottom of the Japanese Wiki entry). In English it is somewhat less poetically known as the daylily. As with the poem in the previous entry there is an insistence on not revealing feelings that goes against the revelation that writing a poem often implies. Once again it would be interesting to know if the poem was published.

Alternate searches:

'wasure-gusa tsumu'