Cólo - Tanka

[órerámar]

Húmence lómi -
qui umnelte marillar
lá netyumnelte
aurenya alassenen
an cólo míre taite

New version:
Húmence lómi -
cé ahyaner marillannar
lá netyanelte
aurenya alassenen
an cólo míre taite


Sleepless nights -
if they changed to pearls
they adorned not
my day with joy
a burden more a jewel of that sort

Schlaflose Nächte -
selbst wenn sie zu Perlen würden
könnt ich mich ihrer
des Tages nicht erfreuen,
so schwer wär das Geschmeide


The original German Tanka was again first published in "Einunddreissig" an online Tanka Journal - February 2014 issue.
http://www.einunddreissig.net/ausgabe-februar-2014.html

For those who read German, this Tanka was published with an analysis by Tony Böhle.

As usual, comments, corrections, etc. welcome.

[Aran]

As far as I can see, -umne is only attested as the Old Quenya future-in-past, not as the conditional mood. But we have a conditional mood in the Ambidexters sentence, where the pattern is ke + past tense in both clauses, but it describes a normal situation. In this case, I would replace ke by kenai 'if it be that' or kenasit, kenasta 'if it be so, may be, perhaps' (VT49:19) for something remotely possible or impossible (cf. Early Qenya naike (PE14:59)).
So: *Kenai náner marillar / lá netyanelte.

[órerámar]

As far as I can see, -umne is only attested as the Old Quenya future-in-past, not as the conditional mood. But we have a conditional mood in the Ambidexters sentence, where the pattern is ke + past tense in both clauses, but it describes a normal situation. In this case, I would replace ke by kenai 'if it be that' or kenasit, kenasta 'if it be so, may be, perhaps' (VT49:19) for something remotely possible or impossible (cf. Early Qenya naike (PE14:59)).
So: *Kenai náner marillar / lá netyanelte.

Thank you, Aran, for your input. I can see your point. I was aware that the use of "umne" might be questionalble. After a lot of tinkering around also with "ahya", I chose "umne" because I saw in it that tension of "going to be" I wanted in the text and within the 7 syllables frame. I know its 8 in German, but in Quenya I like to be in the fixed form.
(PE14.59 : naike = at head of wish) "kenai" expresses more a wish than simply a conditional. But if I go with the Ambidexter model and the verb "ahya", I have at least clearly the change, although 8 syllables. What do you think of :

ké ahyaner mir marillar or
ké ahyaner marillannar
lá netyanelte

[Aran]

(PE14.59 : naike = at head of wish) "kenai" expresses more a wish than simply a conditional.

What tells you that it's a wish? The translation doesn't imply that, it just seems like a longer variant of ké: *ke na i 'if be that', similarly *ke na sita 'if be so'.
In Early Qenya naike is only said to often express the 'pure optative'. The situation there seems to be that there are levels of possibility (proximal and distal, similar to demonstratives), but not necessarily a clear-cut distinction between optative and conditional.

ké ahyaner mir marillar or
ké ahyaner marillannar
lá netyanelte

This should work (the allative sounds more elegant to me). And if you need 7 syllables, you could use virya-, virne from PE17.

[órerámar]

(PE14.59 : naike = at head of wish) "kenai" expresses more a wish than simply a conditional.

What tells you that it's a wish? The translation doesn't imply that, it just seems like a longer variant of ké: *ke na i 'if be that', similarly *ke na sita 'if be so'.
In Early Qenya naike is only said to often express the 'pure optative'. The situation there seems to be that there are levels of possibility (proximal and distal, similar to demonstratives), but not necessarily a clear-cut distinction between optative and conditional.

This should work (the allative sounds more elegant to me). And if you need 7 syllables, you could use virya-, virne from PE17.

I did not say "a wish", but "more a wish than simply a conditional", which means that I see the balance more to the optative side, beside various levels of other possibilities. As PE17:74 says "na is usually used in wishes", it is reasonable to suspect an element of wish in compounds with "na, nai" (kenasit, kenai) and depending on the sentence that follows it may be misleading.
I prefer the allative too and my choice fell on ahya- because of the second gloss "alternate" of virya- and since "Einunddreissig" gives such a good explanation for the eighth syllable, I can't resist to use it in Quenya too.
Thanks, Aran, for your comments.