今日だにも庭を盛りと移る花
消えずはありとも雪かとも見よ
消えずはありとも雪かとも見よ
- Roma-ji
-
Kyō dani mo niwa o sakari to utsuru hana kiezu wa ari tomo yuki ka to mo miyo
- English Translation
-
Today, at the least
the flowers at their height fall
across the garden
though they will not melt away
look on them and call them snow
- Meaning
- Today at least, look at these flowers, at their height now on the garden ground, and call them snow, though snow is what they will not melt like.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 135
Headnote: one year he went in secret to view the blossom at the palace, and gathered the flowers that had fallen in the garden into the lid of an inkstone box and sent them to the Regent.
The second of the poems that see fallen blossom as snow. The headnote records a year when the retired sovereign went privately to view the flowers at the palace, gathered fallen petals into the lid of an inkstone box and sent them to the Regent. The poem accompanied that gift, and the poem that follows is the reply.
The poet, given as Retired Emperor, is Go-Toba; this is his third appearance in this book, after the ninety-ninth and hundred and thirty-third poems. The Regent to whom he sent it is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune.
The time is when the cherries fall; the place is the palace garden.
The occasion was the sending of the fallen petals.
The particle in the first line means at least, if nothing more, the same word as in the previous poem; the two share it.
The second line means: taking the garden for their height. What is worth looking at now is not the branch but the ground.
The verb in the third line means to lose colour, to fall.
The fourth line concedes in advance that these will not melt as snow would. The impossibility of the comparison is admitted, and the request is made all the same.
The closing imperative asks the recipient directly. Where the previous poem guessed at how a stranger might see them, this one instructs the reader of the poem, in the manner proper to an exchange.
- Author
- Go-Toba In
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On Yoshino's height the cherries on the high peak have fallen and gone and even the storm is white at the daybreak of the spring
- 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
- Was it left behind for the one who was not asked that it lingers still the white snow of the blossom kept back from tomorrow's fall
- In eightfold splendour the cherry at my eaves' edge has begun to fade if only a visitor would come before the wind does