Yukite minu hito mo shinobe to haru no no no katami ni tsumeru wakana narikeri

English Translation

That those who could not
go and see might yearn for it
on the fields of spring
gathered as a keepsake here
these are the young herbs indeed

Meaning

So that those who never went out to see it might think of it too, these young herbs were gathered as a keepsake of the fields in spring.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 14

Headnote: for a screen, in the Engi era.
The poem takes as its scene the carrying home of gathered herbs, which then stand as proof of spring for someone who could not go out to the fields. The headnote places it as a screen poem of Emperor Daigo's reign, written to accompany a painted scene of herb-gathering.
Ki no Tsurayuki (?-c. 945) compiled the Kokin Wakashu and wrote its Japanese preface. He served as governor of Tosa and is known as the author of the Tosa Diary, his record of the journey home at the end of that appointment.
The season is the time of herb-gathering; the place is a field in spring.
The occasion was composition for a screen. Such poems often speak in the voice of a figure within the painting, and this one keeps to that convention.

The first two lines mean: so that even those who did not go out and see may hold the fields in mind. A quotative particle carries that intention forward into what follows.
The word in the fourth line names something left behind as a token of remembrance. Here the gathered herbs stand in for the spring field itself.
The poem closes with an exclamatory auxiliary, the tone of someone giving a thing its meaning after the fact: so this is what these herbs were for.
The three poems before this one look at spring through the eyes of those out in the fields; this one carries something back from the field to a person who was never there. The arrangement suits a screen poem, where the viewer likewise thinks of spring without going out to meet it.

Author

Ki no Tsurayuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other