巻向の檜原のいまだ曇らねば
小松が原に淡雪ぞ降る
小松が原に淡雪ぞ降る
- Roma-ji
-
Makimuku no hibara no imada kumoraneba komatsugahara ni awayuki zo furu
- English Translation
-
At Makimuku
the cypress grove is not yet
clouded over, and
on the field of little pines
the light snow is falling still
- Meaning
- No cloud has yet come over the cypress grove at Makimuku, and still the light snow falls on the field of young pines.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 20
Headnote: topic unknown.
Light snow again, following the previous poem, but without any conceit: the oddity of snow falling from a clear sky is simply set out as a contrast between two named places. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, given by his court title, is Otomo no Yakamochi (c. 718-785), a son of Otomo no Tabito who rose to Middle Counsellor. He is thought to have had a large hand in compiling the Man'yoshu, in which more poems by him survive than by anyone else.
The season is early spring; the place is Makimuku in Yamato Province, in present-day Sakurai in Nara Prefecture, and the field of young pines nearby.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The poem derives from a piece in Book Ten of the Man'yoshu, in which light snow drifts from the tops of young pines before any cloud has reached the cypress grove at Makimuku.
The first two lines name a grove of cypress at Makimuku, fixing the place by a well-known name.
A negative in the concessive form with its particle gives the reason in the third line: because no cloud has come over. The sky, in other words, is clear.
With the fourth line the ground shifts from the cypress grove to the field of young pines. Tall cypress against low pine draws the eye downward.
The close repeats the previous poem's ending, an emphatic particle governing the verb, so that the falling of the snow is strongly asserted. Snow out of a clear sky makes no sense, and the poem states it without explanation, in a manner characteristic of the Man'yoshu.
Because the previous poem ends on the same words, two pieces sharing a final line are placed side by side.
- Author
- Otomo no Yakamochi
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The warbler is here and sings, yet the snow still falls and under its weight the cedar leaves have gone white on Osaka's mountainside
- Now that spring has come take them for blossoms, it says and on Kataoka's upper leaves of the pine trees the light snow is falling still
- Would snow fall again at this late hour? Surely not for the shimmering of the burning day of spring has already come to be
- Which of them, I ask shall I take to be blossom in the old village on the wide plain of Kasuga where snow has not yet melted