Hakanakute suginishi kata o kazoureba hana ni mono omou haru zo henikeru

English Translation

Counting up the years
that have gone by, come to nothing
I find they were springs
and in every one of them
the flowers gave me sorrow

Meaning

When I count over the days that have slipped away to nothing, I find they were springs spent brooding over the flowers.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 101

Headnote: from a hundred-poem sequence.
The third poem. Taking up the previous poem's account of years given to the blossom, this one counts those years back over. The two treat the same subject in succession. The headnote assigns it to a hundred-poem sequence.
Princess Shokushi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa, had served as High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine. In Book One she is the poet of the third, fifty-second and eighty-third poems.
The time is the cherry season; no place is given.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred-poem sequence.

The first line means fleeting, insubstantial, and sets the quality of the time that has gone before anything else.
The word in the second line does not mean a direction but what lies behind: the past.
The third line, counting them over, gives the act of looking back.
The fourth line means brooding on account of the flowers; the particle marks cause. Blossom ought to be a source of joy, and here it is the occasion of care.
An emphatic particle governs the attributive form at the close: on counting, it turns out that only such springs have accumulated. Where Shunzei asked the flowers for pity, this poem addresses no one and closes inside itself.

Author

Princess Shokushi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other