Sakurairo no niwa no harukaze ato mo nashi towaba zo hito no yuki to dani mimu

English Translation

Cherry-coloured now
the garden, with the spring wind
and not a footprint
if a caller came, he might
at least take it all for snow

Meaning

The garden is the colour of cherry, and the spring wind blows across it with no footprint anywhere; if someone came, he might at least take it for snow.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 134

Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
Three poems follow in which fallen petals are seen as snow. This is the first, on a garden of flowers that no one has trodden. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
Fujiwara no Teika was one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. In Book One he is the poet of the thirty-eighth, fortieth, forty-fourth, sixty-third and ninety-first poems.
The time is after the cherries have fallen; the place is the poet's garden.
The occasion was submission to the contest.

The first line has the whole garden turned the colour of cherry by fallen petals.
The second line brings in the wind that stirs them.
The third line means: not a footprint either. Nothing marks the fallen flowers because no one comes. It is the situation of Norikane's hundred and twenty-fifth poem, given here in a visible form, as an absence of tracks.
The fourth line supposes a visitor.
The particle in the closing line means at least, if nothing more: if they will not be seen as flowers, let them at least be taken for snow. The old comparison of fallen blossom to snow is entrusted here to the imagined eye of another. The poem that follows also asks that they be seen as snow, and the two are linked.

Author

Fujiwara no Teika

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other