Chirinureba nioi bakari o ume no hana ari to ya sode ni harukaze no fuku

English Translation

Once it has fallen
only the fragrance is left
and as if the plum
were still there, over my sleeve
the wind of the spring blows on

Meaning

The blossom has fallen and only the scent remains; and as though the flowers were still on the tree, the spring wind keeps blowing it across my sleeve.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 53

Headnote: composed on the theme of the plum's scent lingering in a sleeve, at the residence of the Tsuchimikado Inner Minister.
The subject is the scent that stays after the blossom has gone. The topic named in the headnote is the fragrance of plum remaining in a sleeve. The Tsuchimikado Inner Minister is Minamoto no Michichika, father of Minamoto no Michiteru of the twenty-fifth poem and Minamoto no Michitomo of the forty-sixth.
The poet is Fujiwara no Ariie (1155-1216), a son of Fujiwara no Shigeie. He belonged to the Rokujo house and became one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu.
The time is after the plum has fallen; no place is given.
The occasion was the set topic.

A perfect auxiliary in the concessive form with its particle opens the poem on a settled fact: because it has fallen.
The second line isolates what is left: the scent alone, the flower gone.
An interrogative particle in the third line governs the attributive verb at the close, making a question close to rhetorical: as if the blossom were still there?
The final line has the wind carrying the fragrance to a sleeve. The forty-third poem took a scent arriving from far off; this one takes a scent arriving after the flowers have gone, a step further into absence.
There is a sense that the wind is being disingenuous in still bringing scent when no flower remains, and the poem takes on the tone of a mild protest against it.

Author

Fujiwara no Ariie

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other