Ōzora wa ume no nioi ni kasumitsutsu kumori mo hatenu haru no yo no tsuki

English Translation

The whole of the sky
hazes with the plum's fragrance
and will not cloud through
so that it hangs half hidden
the moon of a night in spring

Meaning

The whole sky is hazed with the scent of plum, and never quite clouds over: the moon of a spring night.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 40

Headnote: from the fifty poems set at the residence of Cloistered Prince Shukaku.
Here begins the run on plum. The poem holds that the scent of plum is what hazes the sky, and sets a blurred moon within that haze. The headnote assigns it to the same set of fifty poems as the thirty-eighth.
The poet is Fujiwara no Teika, author of the thirty-eighth poem; this is his second appearance in the book.
The time is a spring night; no place is given.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.

The first two lines state a cause: the sky is hazed by the scent of plum. A small thing at ground level is made to cover the whole sky, and the exaggeration is deliberate.
A continuative particle in the third line holds the hazing in progress.
The verb in the fourth line means to do a thing through to the end, and it is negated: the sky does not cloud completely, and so the moon is still there. It is the same way of catching an incomplete state as in the twenty-third poem.
The close is a noun, and the same noun that ends the twenty-third poem. But where Yoshitsune wrote of a moon that would not blur, this poem writes of a moon blurred and still not gone; one line ends both, from opposite sides.
Haze, which is seen, is bound to fragrance, which is smelled, and moonlight is laid over both. The mingling of the senses is the centre of the poem.

Author

Fujiwara no Teika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other