Harusame no soho furu sora no oyami sezu otsuru namida ni hana zo chirikeru

English Translation

The rain of the spring
falls steadily from the sky
with no let-up, and
in the tears that keep falling
the flowers are falling too

Meaning

Like the spring rain that comes down steadily from the sky, my tears fall without pause; and with them the blossom is falling.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 119

Headnote: topic unknown.
Spring rain, tears and falling blossom are laid over one another. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
Minamoto no Shigeyuki belonged to the Seiwa Genji and is counted among the thirty-six immortals of poetry. In Book One he is the poet of the twenty-eighth poem.
The time is the season of spring rain; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The verb in the second line means to fall steadily and softly. Everything to that point works almost as a preface for the phrase below, so that the manner of the rain is laid over the manner of the tears.
The word in the third line means a brief pause, and it is negated: without any break. It governs both the rain and the tears.
The fourth line means: with those unceasing tears. The particle marks two things happening together.
An emphatic particle governs the attributive verb at the close, the same ending as the hundred and sixteenth poem, so that two poems in succession close alike.
Three falling things, rain, tears and petals, are stacked, and no reason is given for the tears. Whether they are for the blossom or for some other grief is left undecided.

Author

Minamoto no Shigeyuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other