むかし見し妹が垣根は荒れにけり
茅花まじりの菫のみして
茅花まじりの菫のみして
- Roma-ji
-
Mukashi mishi imo ga kakine wa arenikeri
tsubana majiri no sumire nomi shite - English Translation
-
The fence I knew
of the girl I once beheld
has fallen to ruin;
amid mingled cogon grass,
violets alone remain.
- Meaning
- The fence of the beloved woman I once used to visit has now fallen utterly into ruin; amid the mingled cogon grass, only scattered violets are left in bloom.
- Commentary
-
Section Twenty-Six: “People change before even the wind can blow,” a quotation from the spring poems of the Horikawa Hyakushu.
The topic is “Violet Greens,” and the poet is Fujiwara no Kimitada.
This poem takes as its original poem one from the Yamato Collection: “From the shallow thatch plain where I pull cogon grass, the field violets—now at their height—grow thick, as does my love.”
- Author
- Yoshida Kenko
- Source
- Tsurezuregusa
- Other
-
- 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?
- The palace guards and their men stand far aside; in the unswept court, where no one tends the garden, flowers have fallen and lie.
- Two strokes for “ko,” the ox-horn shape for “i,” the straight line “shi,” the crooked form for “ku”— thus, my lord, you are.