Here is a loose translation of another old Japanese waka for the season of winter:
So cold the winter!
The wind never ceases
In the mountain village.
Still the sleet is falling
Ever more heavily.
As previously mentioned, a waka in form is like a hokku with two extra lines. It has a “turning point” in the middle that acts both as the last line of the hokku portion and as the first line of the second (originally 5/7/7/ phonetic units) part. In this verse it is “In the mountain village.”
We can separate them like this:
So cold the winter!
The Wind never ceases
In the mountain village.
In the mountain village,
Still the sleet is falling
Every more heavily.
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