Iwane fumi kasanaru yama o wakesutete hana mo ikue no ato no shirakumo

English Translation

Treading on bare rock
I have pushed through range on range
and left them behind
and how many folds of cloud
white behind me, and of bloom

Meaning

Over the rocks I have pushed through range after range and left them behind me; and behind me now, fold upon fold, white cloud, and blossom.

Commentary

Book One Spring Poems I 93

Headnote: composed on the theme of blossom on a journey, for a contest at the Bureau of Poetry.
The fifteenth poem in the run on cherry blossom. The topic was blossom seen while travelling, and the poem looks back over a road already crossed.
This is Masatsune's second appearance in the book, after the seventy-fourth poem. He was one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu.
The time is the cherry season; the place is a road over the mountains.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line, treading on rock, gives the roughness of a mountain track in concrete terms.
The second line names ranges folded one behind another.
The verb in the third line means to push through and leave behind. The word for discarding suggests no regret for what has been crossed, and stands against the act of looking back in the lines below.
The fourth line means the blossom too, fold upon fold. Layered mountains and layered flowers are taken up in the same word.
The poem closes on a noun; the word for what is behind means the road already travelled. Looking back, white cloud lies over the crossed ranges, and whether it is cloud or blossom cannot be told. The device of the eighty-seventh poem is here used from the position of a traveller.

Author

Fujiwara no Masatsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other