Kasumi tatsu haru no yamabe ni sakurabana akazu chiru to ya uguisu no naku

English Translation

Where the haze is up
on the hills at spring, is it
that the cherry falls
before we have had our fill
that the warbler is crying

Meaning

On the hazed spring hillside, is the warbler crying because the cherry falls before anyone can have enough of it?

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 109

Headnote: for the contest at the Empress's palace in the Kanpyo era.
The third poem on falling blossom. The regret at the fall is given not to a person but to a warbler. The headnote places it at a contest held at the Empress's palace in the reign of Emperor Uda; Ise's sixty-fifth poem in Book One comes from the same contest.
The poet is recorded only as unknown.
The time is when the cherries fall; the place is a hazed hillside in spring.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line raises a sign of spring and fixes the scene.
The second line gives the place.
The third names the object and the fourth the event. The verb means before one has had enough, the word used in the ninety-ninth and hundred and fifth poems and recurring through this book.
A quotative particle with an interrogative one governs the attributive verb at the close: is that what it is saying as it cries?
Reading human words into a bird's voice is the pattern of Jakuren's fifty-eighth poem in Book One, where the geese cried a farewell. The regret is not stated by the speaker but put into the mouth of the bird.

Author

Unknown Poet

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

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