Toki wa ima haru ni narinu to miyuki furu tōki yamabe ni kasumi tanabiku

English Translation

The season is now
turned into spring, it would seem
where deep snow still falls
on the far mountainsides now
the mist has begun to trail

Meaning

The season has just turned to spring, and out where the deep snow falls, along the distant hills, the mist lies trailing.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 9

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
Like the poem before it, this one holds snow and haze in the same view, but instead of snow close at hand it looks toward the ridgelines of distant mountains and sets the haze along them. Both headnote and attribution carry over from the previous poem and are not separately given.
As before, the poet is recorded only as unknown.
The time is just after the first day of spring; the place is a distant range where snow still lies.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
This poem too derives from a piece in Book Ten of the Man'yoshu, and it is placed here beside its companion.

The first line fixes the moment: the season, exactly now.
In the second line a perfect auxiliary states plainly that spring has arrived, and a quotative particle makes the scene below seem to be announcing it.
The third line, with an honorific prefix, means deep-lying snow. Winter is set down once again.
The fourth line carries the eye at once into the distance, to the far hills, so that snow falls near and haze rises far, and the contrast becomes one of space.
The poem ends on a plain verb in the conclusive form, the same close as the second poem of the anthology. Where the previous poem joined winter and spring by a connective adverb, this one sets them side by side by distance, solving the same problem another way.

Author

Unknown Poet

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other