With sleeves soaked through,
the water once I cupped now froze;
now, on this spring day,
is today’s gentle wind
melting that ice away?
- Meaning
-
The water I once scooped up, soaking my sleeves without my knowing in the heat of summer, lay frozen through the cold season—might today’s warm wind, on the day spring begins, be melting that ice away?
- Commentary
-
Volume One: Spring Songs (Upper)
A poem composed on the day the Beginning of Spring.
It alludes to the phrase in the Liji (Yueling), “In the first month of spring, the east wind melts the ice.”
- Author
-
Ki no Tsurayuki
- Source
-
Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
-
Matsuyama’s waves
keep the old, familiar face,
never changing.
Yet you, my beloved,
fade, losing even form.
-
Before the year turns,
spring has already arrived;
one passing year—
shall I call it last year,
or this year, I wonder?
-
Spring haze rising—
where can it be found at all?
Here in fair Yoshino,
on Yoshino’s mountain slopes,
snow is still falling.
-
While snow still falls,
spring has already arrived;
the bush warbler’s
tears, once frozen in the cold—
are they melting now?