Hana chireba tou hito mare ni narihatete itoishi kaze no oto nomi zo suru

English Translation

Once the flowers fall
those who came grow rare, until
no one comes at all
and all that is left to hear
is the wind I used to hate

Meaning

Now the flowers have fallen, visitors have become rare and then ceased altogether, and all I hear is the wind I so resented.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 125

Headnote: on the theme of blossom fallen and callers few.
The topic named is that phrase, and the poem gives the quiet of a house after the flowers have gone.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Norikane (1107-1165), who served as Minister of Justice.
The time is after the cherries have fallen; the place is the poet's house.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line gives a settled condition: because the flowers have fallen.
The second line says that callers have become rare, from which we learn, by implication, that they came while the flowers were there.
The verb in the third line means to do a thing through to the end: not merely rare but stopped entirely.
The verb in the fourth line means to find hateful, with a past auxiliary in the attributive form. The wind, hated for scattering the flowers, takes on another meaning here.
A limiting particle and an emphatic one govern the attributive verb at the close. The sound of the hated wind is now the only thing that comes. The turn by which an object of hatred becomes the sole company is the poem's point.
Hachijoin no Takakura's fifty-fourth poem in Book One had the plum fall with no one coming; here people stop coming after the fall, and the order is reversed.

Author

Fujiwara no Norikane

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other