It is the cherry
that brings it home to us all:
blossom at its best
and crimson leaf alike belong
to a world that does not stay
- Meaning
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It is the cherry that brings it home: blossom at its best and crimson leaf alike belong to a world that does not stay.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Agemaki
The second of the five poems of the outing, spoken by Kaoru. Picking up the cherry of spring from the poem before, he answers that the cherry is precisely what teaches impermanence. Having lost the Eighth Prince, and with nothing settled between himself and Oigimi, he colours even a party with his own cast of mind.
Omoi shirasu is to bring a thing home to someone. The cherry, which blooms and at once falls, has always served as the figure for what does not last. Setting blossom and crimson leaf side by side, he says that all the beauty of spring and autumn passes. That a piece of party verse becomes, in his mouth, a statement of Buddhist doctrine is characteristic of him.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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