Miyoshino no ōkawabe no furuyanagi kage koso miene harumekinikeri

English Translation

By the great river
of Yoshino, the old grove
of willows: no shade
can be seen there yet, and still
it has begun to feel spring

Meaning

The old willows by the great river of Yoshino cast no shadow yet, and even so, everything has begun to feel like spring.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 70

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The second poem in the run on willow. The previous poem gave a road where the willow's shadow fell; this one gives old willows not yet in enough leaf to cast one. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Prince Sukehito (1073-1119) was the third son of Emperor Go-Sanjo. He never came to the throne.
The time is early spring; the place is the bank of the great river at Yoshino in Yamato Province.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first two lines set the poem at Yoshino, the ground of the anthology's opening poem; the great river is the Yoshino.
The third line names willows grown old, the counterpart of the young green willows above, so that the run moves from new trees to old.
In the fourth line an emphatic particle takes a negative in the concessive form. The construction closes and then runs on, giving a concessive sense; it is the same form as Kunaikyo's fourth poem about tracks that cannot be seen, and the two answer each other.
The verb at the close means to take on the look of spring. Nothing is in leaf and nothing casts a shadow, and the season is nonetheless recognised where no visible sign exists.
This is the structure of the fourth poem, which found spring in footprints erased by snow: the device of marking a season by what cannot be seen returns in the book's later half.

Author

Prince Sukehito

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other