Shirakumo no Tatsuta no yama no yaezakura izure o hana to wakite orikemu

English Translation

Where the white clouds hang
on Tatsuta's mountainside
the eightfold cherry
and which of them did you take
for the flower, and break it off

Meaning

On Tatsuta, where the white clouds hang, the double cherries grow; and how did you tell which was the flower, to break this branch?

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 90

Headnote: when someone had broken off a double cherry and sent it.
The twelfth poem in the run on cherry blossom, written in thanks for a branch of double cherry. Between white cloud and blossom, the poem praises the sender for having told the two apart.
The Monk Domyo (974-1020) was a son of Fujiwara no Michitsuna and a Tendai monk. He was known for the beauty of his voice, and stories about his chanting survive.
The time is the season of the double cherries; the place is Tatsuta in Yamato, the same ground as the eighty-fifth poem.
The occasion was the gift of the branch.

The first line reaches down to the mountain below, meaning the mountain the white clouds hang on and belonging at the same time to the tradition of seeing blossom as cloud.
The third line names the double cherry, whose petals lie in layers; the word for eightfold answers to the layering of the clouds.
The fourth line asks which was taken for the flower, and gives the difficulty of telling one from the other. Mitsune's twenty-second poem uses the same phrasing, with snow and blossom confused where here it is cloud and blossom.
An auxiliary of past conjecture ends the poem: how can you have told them apart and broken it? A light astonishment at the sender's skill is folded into the question.
Though the occasion is an exchange, no thanks are stated directly; the praise is delivered as a remark on how hard the distinction was.

Author

The Monk Domyo

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other