Yo no naka no asaki se ni nomi nariyukeba kinō no fuji no hana to koso mire

English Translation

Since all the world turns
now to nothing but shallows
I look on these blooms
and see them as yesterday's
deep pool, yesterday's flowers

Meaning

Since the world turns to nothing but shallows now, I look at these blossoms and see in them yesterday's deep pool, yesterday's flowers.

Commentary

61 The Wisteria That Remains

At the Teiji palace, a number of the retired emperor's ladies had rooms and lived there; but after some years, when the Kawara mansion had been beautifully built, he had a room made ready for the Kyōgoku Lady alone and moved there. It was spring. Those left behind felt it keenly. High nobles came calling, and as they walked about the garden looking at the wisteria in full bloom at the Teiji palace, remarking to one another that he had gone without even seeing the flowers at their height, they found a letter tied to a wisteria branch. Opening it, they read "Yo no naka no asaki se ni nomi nariyukeba kinō no fuji no hana to koso mire". They were struck by the poem and moved by it, but no one could tell which woman had written it. One of the nobles then composed "Fuji no hana iro no asaku mo miyuru kana utsuroinikeru nagori narubeshi". That is the whole of the section.
The Teiji palace was the residence of Emperor Uda after his abdication. The Kyōgoku Lady was a daughter of the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Tokihira, and appears in the third section. The Kawara mansion had been the residence of Minamoto no Tōru, rebuilt after being handed on. High nobles were officials of the third rank and above, together with consultants. Of the woman who tied the poem to the branch, the prose says only that no one knew who she was.
The setting is the garden of the Teiji palace, in the spring after the retired emperor had moved to Kawara, with the wisteria at its height.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it. The poem was left tied to a branch, where the visiting nobles found it.
They were moved by it but could not tell who had written it, and one of them composed a reply. The section closes there.

The opening draws on an anonymous poem in the Kokin-shū which asks what in this world stays constant, since yesterday's deep pool in the Asuka river is today's shallows. A deep pool turning to shallows is how she states that his favour has gone elsewhere.
The word for wisteria carries the sound of the word for a deep pool, so that yesterday's pool and yesterday's flowers stand in one word.
The closing, with an emphatic particle governing its verb, insists on how she sees them.
The wisteria before her is at its height, and she looks at it and sees something already past. Together with leaving the poem unsigned on a branch, the whole avoids making any direct appeal.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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