わが心春の山辺にあくがれて
長々し日を今日も暮らしつ
長々し日を今日も暮らしつ
- Roma-ji
-
Waga kokoro haru no yamabe ni akugarete naganagashi hi o kyō mo kurashitsu
- English Translation
-
This heart of mine has
gone wandering to the spring hills
and the long, long day
I have let it pass again
and spent today as before
- Meaning
- My heart has gone off wandering to the hills of spring, and once again I have let the long day go by.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 81
Headnote: a poem for a contest at the Teiji Palace.
The third poem in the run on cherry blossom. Where the previous poem measured the waiting in days, this one has the heart go off to the hills while the body stays and the day runs out. The Teiji Palace of the headnote was the residence of Emperor Uda.
This is Ki no Tsurayuki's second appearance in the book, after the fourteenth poem. He compiled the Kokin Wakashu and wrote its Japanese preface.
The time is daytime in spring; the place is where the poet is, though his heart is out among the spring hills.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The first line makes the heart the subject, treating it as something detachable from the body and able to act on its own.
The second line gives its destination, and the verb in the third means to drift away from the body and wander. It belongs chiefly to love poetry; here it is turned toward blossom.
The fourth line names the length of a spring day. The longer the day, the emptier the passing of it.
The particle in the closing line carries the sense of today as well, marking the repetition; a perfect auxiliary ends the poem.
Takatoki's poem measured the loss in days; this one measures it within a single day. Long and short make the pair, and in both the blossom goes unseen.
- Author
- Ki no Tsurayuki
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- When the cherries bloom I shall be first to see them so I thought, and while I thought so the days went by in the mountain village, spring
- We who are like minds not knowing where we have come the day has grown dark lend us your flowering house you warbler of the meadows
- Now the cherry trees seem to have opened, and now a thin cloud has come and the whole look of the world has hazed over into spring