Hana ni akanu nageki wa itsumo seshikadomo kyō no koyoi ni niru toki wa nashi

English Translation

I have always known
the grief of never having
my fill of blossom
but nothing has been like this
like this evening of today

Meaning

I have always grieved at never having my fill of the blossom; but there has never been a night like this one, tonight.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 105

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The second poem on time spent among the flowers. Where the previous poem counted up days, this one holds to a single irreplaceable night, and the scale narrows. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Ariwara no Narihira (825-880) was a grandson of Emperor Heizei and is counted among both the six and the thirty-six immortals of poetry. He has long been taken for the central figure of the Tales of Ise.
The time is a night at the height of the cherry season; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The poem appears in the Tales of Ise as well, in the scene of Prince Koretaka's blossom-viewing at Katano. Shunzei's poem on hunting cherries at Katano, the hundred and fourteenth of this book, looks back to that scene.

The first two lines name the grief of never having one's fill of blossom. The verb is the one used in the ninety-ninth poem that opens this book.
The third line joins a past auxiliary in the concessive form to a concessive particle: it has always been so, and yet. The admission is made and then turned.
The fourth line piles day upon night, today's this-evening, so that time narrows to a point.
The poem ends flatly on a negative. Having summoned the whole past, it declares that none of it resembles this.
The previous poem gave the repetition of days; this one cuts a single night out of that repetition. The two make a pair in their handling of time.

Author

Ariwara no Narihira

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other