Katsuragi ya Takama no sakura sakinikeri Tatsuta no oku ni kakaru shirakumo

English Translation

At Katsuragi
the cherries of Takama
have opened, and there
far behind Tatsuta hangs
a long trailing of white cloud

Meaning

The cherries on Takama at Katsuragi have opened: that is the white cloud lying deep behind Tatsuta.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 87

Headnote: composed as a spring poem, when poems were being written at the Bureau of Poetry.
The ninth poem in the run on cherry blossom. White cloud seen far off is read as blossom. The headnote places it at the Bureau of Poetry.
This is Jakuren's second appearance in the book, after the fifty-eighth poem. A nephew of Fujiwara no Shunzei, he was adopted by him and later took orders.
The time is the cherry season; the place is the high peak of Takama on Katsuragi in Yamato, and the depths of Tatsuta seen from there.
The occasion was composition at the Bureau of Poetry.

The first line names the place with an exclamatory particle, taking up the same mountain as Masatsune's seventy-fourth poem.
An exclamatory auxiliary in the third line marks the recognition: so they have opened. But no flower has actually been seen.
The fourth and fifth lines give the grounds for the judgement. Reading whiteness as blossom is an old device, and the ninetieth and ninety-first poems continue it.
The poem closes on a noun, so that the evidence stands last, in inversion. As in the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh poems, the inference is stated first and its grounds afterwards.
Three Yamato place names are stacked, carrying the eye further and further off, so that the sequence of names itself creates the distance.

Author

The Monk Jakuren

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other