Shimo mayou sora ni shioreshi karigane no kaeru tsubasa ni harusame zo furu

English Translation

In a sky where frost
went astray they drooped and hung
and now on the wings
of the wild geese going home
the rain of the spring comes down

Meaning

In a sky of drifting frost they hung heavy; and now the spring rain falls on the wings of the geese as they go home.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 63

Headnote: from the fifty poems set by Cloistered Prince Shukaku.
The poem stands at the turn from returning geese to spring rain, setting the frost the birds endured in winter against the rain that falls on them now. The headnote assigns it to the same set of fifty poems as the thirty-eighth and fortieth.
This is Teika's fourth appearance in the book, after the thirty-eighth, fortieth and forty-fourth poems.
The time is spring, in a sky through which the geese are flying north.
The occasion was the presentation of the fifty poems.

The first line has frost drifting confusedly through the sky. Frost does not in fact fall, but the phrase renders the severity of the cold as a scene in the air. This is winter.
A past auxiliary in the attributive form marks what once was. The verb means to lose strength, to droop, and gives the birds worn down by cold.
With the third and fourth lines the scene returns to the present and the wings now beating north.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. Winter's frost and spring's rain are set against each other across a stretch of time, on the same pair of wings.
Two seasons are laid over a single point, exactly as scent and moonlight were laid over a sleeve in the forty-fourth poem: one poet using one method in a different place.

Author

Fujiwara no Teika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other