Uramizu ya ukiyo o hana no itoitsutsu sasou kaze araba to omoikeru o ba

English Translation

Does it not resent
that while it fled this sad world
the flower had wished
that there might be a wind here
to call it away with it

Meaning

Surely it bears the wind no grudge: the flower, weary of this wretched world, had been hoping for a wind to carry it off.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 140

Headnote: topic unknown.
The second poem reading impermanence in the fall of the blossom. The flower might be expected to resent the wind that strips it, but since it had wearied of the world and wished to be carried off, the poem argues, it bears no grudge. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, known as the daughter of Shunzei, was in fact his granddaughter and adopted daughter; this is her second appearance in this book, after the hundred and twelfth poem.
The time is when the cherries fall; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The particle in the first line makes the question rhetorical: would it resent? Surely not. The conclusion is placed first and its grounds follow, in inversion.
The second line names the wretched world, a phrase carrying a Buddhist view of things; the particle after the word for flower marks it as the subject.
The verb in the third line means to find hateful, the word also used in Norikane's hundred and twenty-fifth poem. The flower is here given the capacity to weary of the world.
The fourth line means: if only there were a wind to call it away. The verb for calling away is the one used of scattering blossom in Kunaikyo's hundred and twenty-eighth poem.
The closing line reaches back to the first: because it had been thinking so. By making the fall the flower's own wish, the poem inverts the usual lament over impermanence, and the idea of a flower renouncing the world carries the sense of taking religious vows.

Author

The Daughter of Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other