ももしきの大宮人はいとまあれや
桜かざして今日も暮らしつ
桜かざして今日も暮らしつ
- Roma-ji
-
Momoshiki no ōmiyabito wa itoma are ya sakura kazashite kyō mo kurashitsu
- English Translation
-
In the palace halls
the courtiers must have leisure
for with cherry sprays
set in their hair, once again
they have spent the day away
- Meaning
- Have the palace people nothing to do? With cherry blossom in their hair they have let another whole day go by.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 104
Headnote: topic unknown.
A run of poems on people passing their time among the flowers begins here. This one looks, as if from outside, at courtiers spending their days at blossom-viewing. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
Yamabe no Akahito was a poet of the Nara period and one of the great figures of the Man'yoshu. In Book One he is the poet of the eleventh and twenty-ninth poems.
The time is the height of the cherry season; the place is the palace or its neighbourhood.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The first line is a pillow word attaching to the word for the great palace, said to derive from a palace built of many stones.
The second line names those who serve at court.
An interrogative particle in the third line reasons toward a cause: is it because they have time to spare? Shomyo's sixty-seventh poem in Book One uses the same phrasing of farmers, so that one form serves two opposed subjects, field labour and court service.
The verb in the fourth line means to wear a flower or a branch in the hair, the word also used in the eighty-eighth poem of Book One.
The closing line is the same as that of Tsurayuki's eighty-first poem in Book One. There the heart went to the hills while the day was wasted; here a day is actually spent among the flowers, and one ending carries two opposite contents.
- Author
- Yamabe no Akahito
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Hana no iro ni amagiru kasumi tachimayoi sora sae niou yamazakura kana
- Next Poem
-
Hana ni akanu nageki wa itsumo seshikadomo kyō no koyoi ni niru toki wa nashi