石上布留野の桜誰植ゑて
春は忘れぬ形見なるらん
春は忘れぬ形見なるらん
- Roma-ji
-
Isonokami Furuno no sakura tare uete haru wa wasurenu katami naruramu
- English Translation
-
On Furu's wide moor
the cherries: who planted them
so that they should be
a keepsake the spring will not
ever let itself forget
- Meaning
- Who planted the cherries on Furu moor at Isonokami, so that they became a keepsake spring never forgets to visit?
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems I 96
Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The eighteenth poem in the run on cherry blossom. Set at Isonokami, the ground of the eighty-eighth poem, it asks where the cherries there came from. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Michitomo; this is his second appearance in the book, after the forty-sixth poem. He was one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu.
The time is the cherry season; the place is Furu moor at Isonokami in Yamato.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The first line is a pillow word leading into the place name of the second. It does the same work as in the eighty-eighth poem, but there it led to the adjective for old and here to the name itself.
The third line asks who planted them, with the implication that the planter is no longer known. Like Tadami's twelfth poem, which asks who marked the field, and Domyo's ninetieth, which asks who broke the branch, it builds the poem around a question about an agent.
The fourth line means that spring, for its part, does not forget. The planter may be forgotten; the season comes every year without fail.
The word at the close names something kept in remembrance, used also in the fourteenth and forty-seventh poems, and the final auxiliary expresses present conjecture.
The theme of flowers outlasting people is that of the eighty-eighth poem; but where that one marvels that they still bloom, this one asks who put them there, and reaches further back in time.
- Author
- Minamoto no Michitomo
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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Hana zo miru michi no shibakusa fumiwakete Yoshino no miya no haru no akebono