いろもかもおなじむかしにさくらめど
年ふる人ぞあらたまりける
年ふる人ぞあらたまりける
- Roma-ji
-
Iro mo ka mo onaji mukashi ni sakuramedo
toshi furu hito zo aratamarikeru - English Translation
-
In color and scent,
just as in the days of old,
bloom the cherry flowers;
yet the one who lives through years
has changed and grown anew.
- Meaning
- The cherry blossoms bloom in color and scent just as in the days of old, yet the person who lives through the years has changed.
- Commentary
-
Spring Songs, Book One
A poem composed in lament at having grown old beneath the beautiful cherry blossoms.
The cherry blossoms remain as they were in the past, yet the one who beholds them loses color and scent and comes to old age.
It likely draws on the line from Chinese poetry: “Year after year the flowers are the same; year after year the people are not.”
- Author
- Ki no Tomonori
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- Can I only look and speak of it to others, O cherry blossoms? I will pluck you in my hand and take you home as gift.
- When I look afar, willow and cherry intermix— the capital, behold, becomes in this spring brocade of the season.
- Who was it sought and plucked, I wonder, spring haze— rising to hide the mountain’s cherry blossoms?
- The cherry blossoms have bloomed, it seems— from the mountain’s ravines appear white clouds.