How wrong is my constructed poem?

Question

I tried writing a classical Japanese poem:

赤き空
青かりたり根
夢がごとし
元を返るべし
汚さざらまし

And here is a rough literal translation:

The red sky,
The origin that was once blue,
Like seeing a dream,
It would be best to turn back,
If it were not dirtied.

(Unfortunately missing all the word play and ambiguity I was trying to insert into the Japanese version.)

I'm pretty unsure if I conjugated everything correctly there. I'm especially worried about 汚さざらまし, which I'm not sure if is even a valid construction. 汚す（未然形）＋ず（未然形）＋まし is what I was trying to do, to say "if it were not dirtied".

I'm basically just doing this to learn a little more about classical Japanese grammar, so any corrections are welcome.

Answer 1

Interesting poem. Let me add a few quick comments.

• 青かりたり根: As is, 青かりたり is 終止形, so the sentence comes to a complete stop there; the next sentence begins with 根. More likely you want the attributive (連体形) 青かりたる.
• 青かりたり根: Rather than たり, you may want to consider き. It is a recollational past, so the poet would be speaking from memory. In attributive, this becomes し.
• 夢がごとし: The English translation does not match, or is at least vague. This is a conclusive form (終止形), so the sentence comes to a complete stop. "They (the sky and origin) are like a dream." This may be your intention and it works. Other options are to make it adverbial (連用形) ごとく, but then it becomes more vague like the English.
• 元を返るべし: This is fine, but you could consider changing it to べきや, which softens the sense as well as adds a sense of question to oneself.
• 汚さざらまし: This is fine. You could optionally emphasis this by adding を to the end.