Haru ni nomi toshi wa aranamu ara oda o kaesugaesu mo hana o mirubeku

English Translation

Let the year be all
one single spring, and no more
so that this rough field
may be turned and turned again
and the blossom seen again

Meaning

Let the whole year be spring and nothing else, so that, as one turns and turns a rough field over, I may look at the flowers again and again.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 89

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The eleventh poem in the run on cherry blossom. The wish that a year might be spring alone is laid over the turning of a field. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Minamoto no Kintada (889-948) was a poet of the early and middle Heian period, counted among the thirty-six immortals of poetry.
The time is the cherry season; the place is near an untilled field.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first two lines join a limiting particle to a final particle of wish directed at others. The poem opens on an impossible request: let the year be spring only.
The third line names an untilled field, the same word Yoshitada uses in the seventy-seventh poem, so that the two share their material.
The fourth line does double duty: turning a field with a hoe, and doing a thing over and over. The rough field was named precisely to make that pivot possible.
The closing form means so that one may, and states the purpose of the wish above.
Everyday labour in a field is turned into the phrasing of a wish to see flowers. The sixty-seventh poem took field work for its actual subject; this one takes it as a figure, and the same material is handled quite differently.

Author

Minamoto no Kintada

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other