Asamidori hana mo hitotsu ni kasumitsutsu oboro ni miyuru haru no yo no tsuki

English Translation

A pale, shallow green
the blossoms too hazing there
into a single
thing, and dimly to be seen
the moon of a night of spring

Meaning

The pale green and the blossom haze together into one, and dimly through it shows the moon of a spring night.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 56

Headnote: when Princess Yushi was living in the Wisteria Court, the ladies and courtiers, all those who might, fell to talking and disputing which was the more moving, spring or autumn, and when most of them inclined to autumn.
The poem was made in the course of an argument over the merits of spring and autumn. The headnote records that while Princess Yushi lived in the Wisteria Court, her ladies and the courtiers debated the question, and most came down on autumn's side; this poem answers for spring.
The poet, daughter of Sugawara no Takasue, is known as the author of the Sarashina Diary. Her aunt on her mother's side wrote the Kagero Diary. Princess Yushi was a daughter of Emperor Go-Suzaku.
The time is a spring night; the place is the Wisteria Court in the palace.
The occasion was that debate, and this reply for spring against a company leaning to autumn.
The scene is described in the Sarashina Diary as well, so that it survives both in a private journal and in an imperial anthology.

The first line is a colour name, the pale green of trees just coming into leaf, set down as a bare noun to open the poem.
The particle in the second line carries the sense of the blossoms as well. Green and white lose their separate colours and run together.
A continuative particle in the third line holds the hazing in progress.
The fourth line brings in the word of the topic and reaches down to the final noun, the same noun that closes the twenty-third, fortieth and forty-seventh poems: its fourth appearance in this book.
An autumn moon is sharp and clear; a spring moon loses its outline. Presenting that vagueness as a beauty rather than a fault is the poem's argument against the company. It answers by description alone, in contrast with Go-Toba's thirty-sixth poem, which denies the convention outright.

Author

Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other