Hakanasa o hoka ni mo iwaji sakurabana sakite wa chirinu aware yo no naka

English Translation

I shall not remark
on the frailty of things
the cherry blossom
opened, and has fallen now
and, ah, so it goes, this world

Meaning

I shall look for no other image of frailty: the cherry opens and is gone. Such, alas, is the world.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 141

Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The third poem reading impermanence in the fall. Where the previous poem argued the resentment away, this one offers no argument and only the fact that flowers open and fall. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, known by his office, is Fujiwara no Sanesada. He rose to Minister of the Left and was a nephew of Shunzei and a cousin of Teika. In Book One he is the poet of the thirty-fifth poem.
The time is when the cherries fall; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line names frailty, the same word that opens Princess Shokushi's hundred and first poem.
The auxiliary in the second line expresses negative intention: I will not name anything else. Nothing further is needed, the poem declares, to speak of impermanence. Shigeyuki's twenty-eighth poem in Book One used the same construction to refuse a comparison; here it is comparison itself that is refused.
The third line gives the single example.
The fourth line means: it opens and at once is gone. The construction marks repetition, so that this happens year upon year.
The poem closes on a noun. The exclamation before it functions as an interjection. One fact is named and the world declared to be that, and the refusal to explain gives the assertion its weight.

Author

Fujiwara no Sanesada

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other