白雲の絶え間になびく青柳の
葛城山に春風ぞ吹く
葛城山に春風ぞ吹く
- Roma-ji
-
Shirakumo no taema ni nabiku aoyagi no Katsuragiyama ni harukaze zo fuku
- English Translation
-
Through the white clouds' gaps
the green willows trail and sway
and over the slopes
of Katsuragi mountain
the wind of the spring blows on
- Meaning
- Green willows sway in the breaks between white clouds, and over Katsuragi mountain the spring wind is blowing.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 74
Headnote: a spring poem for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The sixth poem in the run on willow. It takes up the gap of the previous poem and repeats the conceit of a willow seen through an opening, but what divides the view is now white cloud rather than haze. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet is Asukai no Masatsune (1170-1221), one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu and held to be the founder of the Asukai school of kickball.
The time is spring; the place is Katsuragi mountain, on the border of Yamato and Kawachi.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The first line puts the scene high up. Willow is a tree of the waterside, so pairing it with white cloud opens the view widely from top to bottom.
The second line has the branches swaying in the breaks between clouds. Where the previous poem's gap marked the line of sight, this one marks the place the willows stand.
The third line reaches down to the mountain named below: the mountain on which the willows grow.
The fourth line fixes the place. Katsuragi, on the border of Yamato and Kawachi, had long been spoken of as a dwelling of the gods.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. As in the seventy-third poem the wind stands at the end, and the two together show what the wind does. Setting willow high on a mountain shifts it away from the received idea of a tree by water, and that is the poem's device.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Masatsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Poled by shallow boats the still reach of Mutsuda and the willow fields their green is deep, and deeply the spring lies hazed upon them
- The wind of the spring blows the haze apart, and through the gaps that open they trail out in disorder the green willow's hanging threads
- On the willow's threads the white dew is strung like beads and I do not know how many ages of spring have gone by since it began
- Pale here, deeper there in the green of the young grass out across the moor even their tracks can be seen the patches of melting snow