Orarekeri kurenai niou ume no hana kesa shirotae ni yuki wa furere do

English Translation

So I broke it off
the plum flower glowing crimson
though this very morn
the snow had come down and lain
white as bleached mulberry cloth

Meaning

Someone has broken it off, the plum flower burning red, though this morning the snow lies everywhere white.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 41

Headnote: topic unknown.
Within the run on plum, this poem takes the red plum. On a morning that is white with snow, the speaker finds that a crimson branch has been broken away. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, known by his office, is Fujiwara no Yorimichi (992-1074), a son of Fujiwara no Michinaga, who served as regent through three reigns. He converted his villa at Uji into the temple of Byodo-in and built its Phoenix Hall.
The time is a morning after snow; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line joins a passive auxiliary to an exclamatory one: so it has been broken off. Who broke it is never named; only the result remains.
The verb in the second line means to shine with a rich colour. Unlike the modern word, it belongs here to sight rather than smell.
The third line names the object and closes the upper half of the poem.
A concessive particle ends the poem: although the snow lies white. Against a ground of white, a broken branch of crimson: the contrast is the whole picture. The word for white names a bleached cloth and by extension whiteness itself.
Snow and plum are joined in the twenty-eighth and thirtieth poems as well, but those turn on the confusion of white blossom with white snow. This one places red plum against snow, and its subject is not white within white but red within white.

Author

Fujiwara no Yorimichi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other