Yoshinoyama sakura ga eda ni yuki chirite hana osoke naru toshi ni mo aru kana

English Translation

On Yoshino's slopes
the snow falls on the branches
of the cherry trees
and this is one of those years
when the blossom will be late

Meaning

On Yoshino the snow comes scattering onto the cherry branches: this is a year when the flowers will be late.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 79

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
A long run on cherry blossom begins here, and the poem set at its entrance is about cherries that have not yet opened. The headnote carries over from the poem before.
This is Saigyo's fourth appearance in the book, after the seventh, twenty-seventh and fifty-first poems. He is known for the great number of his cherry poems, and the cherries of Yoshino are his characteristic subject.
The time is when the cherries should be in flower; the place is Yoshino in Yamato Province, the same ground as the opening poem of the anthology, so that the book and the cherry run begin in the same place.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first two lines fix place and object; the possessive particle is an old form.
The verb in the third line, to scatter, properly belongs to blossom, and used of snow it raises the old confusion between them. Shigeyuki's twenty-eighth poem uses the same phrasing. Here, though, the point is that the snow is scattering while the blossom has not yet begun.
The suffix in the fourth line adds the sense of seeming so, avoiding assertion: it is not certain yet, but it looks like a late year.
The poem closes on an exclamatory particle, in the tone of one who waits and accepts: so this is that kind of year.
The run on plum opened with the thirty-ninth poem and a spring without flowers; the run on cherry likewise begins from absence. The same procedure is repeated in the arrangement.

Author

The Monk Saigyo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other