In the valley wind,
between gaps where ice melts,
from each small opening
waves come flowing out—are these
spring’s very first flowers?
- Meaning
-
Could the waves that flow out from between the melting ice, stirred by the wind in the valley, be the very first flowers of spring?
- Commentary
-
Spring Songs, Book One
A poem from the poetry contest at court in the reign of Kanpyō.
Many nouns are used within a single poem, giving it a sense of rhythm.
A poetry contest was a literary game in which poets were divided into two sides and competed over the merits of their poems.
In the Kokin Wakashū, the poems before and after this one are about the bush warbler, but this poem alone is different.
- Author
-
Minamoto no Toshiyuki
- Source
-
Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
-
Is it spring, I ask,
or are the flowers too slow to come?
I would know by hearing—
yet even the bush warbler
does not sing at all.
-
People say, “spring has come,”
yet, unless the bush warbler sings,
I think it has not—
so long as it does not sing,
spring is not yet here.
-
The scent of flowers,
entrusting it to the wind,
I send it along—
a guide that hastens to lead
the bush warbler forth.
-
If from the valley
no voice of the bush warbler
were to come forth,
who then would ever know
that spring has come at all?