Chirimagau hana no yosome wa Yoshinoyama arashi ni sawagu mine no shirakumo

English Translation

Scattering, mingling
the flowers from a distance
on Yoshino's slopes
are white cloud on the summit
tossed and troubled by the storm

Meaning

Seen from far off, the blossom falling in confusion on Yoshino is white cloud on the ridge, tossed about by the storm.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 132

Headnote: when the company wrote poems for a contest at the Kasuga Shrine.
The third poem on blossom scattered by storms. Falling flowers are taken at a distance for white cloud. The headnote places it at a contest held at the Kasuga Shrine.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Yorisuke (1112-1186), who served as Minister of Justice. Shunzei's fifty-ninth poem in Book One was written and sent for a contest that Yorisuke held.
The time is when the cherries fall; the place is Yoshino in Yamato Province.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The verb in the first line means to be mixed in and become indistinguishable, the word also used in Ise's hundred and seventh poem.
The word in the second line means the look of a thing from a distance, from outside. It states at once that the poem is about how distance changes what is seen: flowers close to, cloud far off.
The third line fixes the place.
The verb in the fourth line means to move in agitation, and gives cloud disturbed by wind. The motion of scattering blossom is transferred to the cloud.
The poem closes on a noun. Poems that turn on telling cloud from blossom appear at the hundred and second, hundred and fifteenth and hundred and twenty-fourth; those cannot decide, while this one knows the thing is blossom and observes that at a distance it looks like cloud, so that the matter becomes one of distance rather than confusion.

Author

Fujiwara no Yorisuke

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other