Because they must fall,
All the more the cherry blooms
Are a lovely sight—
In this sorrow-laden world,
What indeed endures for long?
- Meaning
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It is precisely because they fall that the cherry blossoms are all the more beautiful. In this sorrow-filled world, what could possibly last for long?
- Commentary
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82. The Heart in Spring
Long ago there was a prince called Prince Koretaka. Beyond Yamazaki there was a detached palace at a place called Minase, and every year when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom he would visit that palace. At such times he would always bring with him the man who was then the head of the Right Horse Bureau.
They did not devote themselves much to falconry but spent their time drinking wine and delighting in composing poems. The cherry blossoms at the Nagisa Palace, a residence on the bank of the Yodo River at Katano where falconry was practiced, were especially elegant and beautiful. There they dismounted their horses beneath the cherry trees and sat down, and people of many different ranks among the attendants composed poems.
The poem was composed by one of them in response to the poem by the head of the Right Horse Bureau: “If in this world here / There were no cherry blossoms— / Then surely in spring / The hearts of people would be / Far more calm and untroubled.”
Taking the falling blossoms of the cherry tree as its starting point, the poem expresses the sorrowful impermanence of the human world, saying that in this troubled life there is nothing that one could wish to last for long.
- Source
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Ise Monogatari
- Other
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