Haruharu no hana wa chiru tomo sakinubeshi mata aigataki hito no yo zo uki

English Translation

Spring after spring the
flowers scatter, and yet they
will surely bloom on
It is the life of a man
never met again, that hurts

Meaning

Spring after spring the flowers scatter, and still they will surely bloom again. It is a human life, never to be met with again, that is hard to bear.

Commentary

71 Mountain Cherries Waiting for the Wind

The Prince of the Ministry of Ceremonial died at the end of the second month, when the cherries were at their height, and the Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi composed "Sakinioi kaze matsu hodo no yamazakura hito no yo yori wa hisashikarikeri". The Minister of the Right of Sanjō replied with "Haruharu no hana wa chiru tomo sakinubeshi mata aigataki hito no yo zo uki". That is the whole of the section.
The Prince of the Ministry of Ceremonial headed that ministry and appears in the seventeenth through twentieth sections and in the fortieth. The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, who took his name from his residence near the embankment of the Kamo river; he appears in the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth and forty-fifth sections and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals. The Minister of the Right of Sanjō is Fujiwara no Sadakata, named for his residence at Sanjō, who appears in the twenty-ninth section; the Fujiwara no Asatada of the sixth section was his son.
The setting is again the time of the prince's death.
What prompted the poem is the one sent to him, "Sakinioi kaze matsu hodo no yamazakura hito no yo yori wa hisashikarikeri", comparing the cherry with a human life.
This reply closes the seventy-first section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone. It was later included in the Shokukokin-shū.

The opening grants that the flowers scatter each spring and asserts that they will bloom again; the grammar is concessive, and the closing verb carries conviction.
Where the other poem compared the cherry and a human life by length, this one compares them by recurrence. The cherry has next year; a man does not.
The fourth line means one who cannot be met with a second time, with an emphatic particle governing the adjective that closes the poem.
The first poem placed the cherry as the longer-lasting thing; this one places it as the thing that returns. Working from the same image while shifting the terms of comparison is a pattern that recurs throughout the exchanges in this book.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other