春の池や井手のかはせにかよふらん
岸の山吹そこもにほへり
岸の山吹そこもにほへり
- Roma-ji
-
Haru no ike ya Ide no kawase ni kayouran
kishi no yamabuki soko mo nioeri - English Translation
-
Does this pond of spring
run through to the shallows at
Ide, I wonder?—
for the kerria on the bank
glows in the depths as well
- Meaning
- Does this pond of spring run through, I wonder, to the shallows at Ide?—for the kerria on the bank is glowing even in the depths below.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Kocho
This is another of the poems made aboard the boats. The hazy treetops on every side were like brocade drawn out to view; the garden before the house opened far away; the willows had deepened and trailed their branches; and the cherries, past their best elsewhere, were smiling here at their height. The wisteria about the galleries was opening in strong color, and above all the kerria along the bank, throwing its reflection on the water, was at its fullest. Waterfowl went in pairs without parting, carrying twigs in their bills, and mandarin ducks laid their pattern across the figured ripples—a scene one wanted copied into a design; and the women, like the man in the tale whose axe handle rotted while he watched, forgot the passing of the day.
"The shallows at Ide" is the Tama-mizu of Ide in Yamashiro, a poetic place since the Man'yoshu and famous for its kerria; behind the poem lies the old verse about the kerria of Ide scattering while the frogs called. "Run through" asks whether the waters are joined. "In the depths" is at the bottom of the pond, where the flowers of the bank are mirrored. Where the previous poem drew on the Cape of Yamabuki in Omi, this one draws on Ide in Yamashiro: two famous places of the kerria set side by side in play. The fancy that this pond may be joined underground to the waters of a famous place tells us what a world apart the garden is.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Come to seek it out, the springtime of the old place, here among the boughs— and what I find is a bloom such as the world seldom shows
- When the wind comes up even the blossoms of the waves take on their color— is this, then, the very place they call the Cape of Yamabuki?
- No need to go seek the mountain borne on the turtle— here, aboard this boat, let us leave behind us the name of those who never grow old
- The boat that we pole onward through the spring sunlight, soft upon the water— even the drops from the pole fall as though they were blossoms