Nagamubeki nokori no haru o kazoureba hana to tomo ni mo chiru namida kana

English Translation

Counting up the springs
that are left me still to see
I find that my tears
are falling together with
the flowers as they scatter

Meaning

When I count over the springs still left me to look at, I find my tears falling with the blossom.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 142

Headnote: when a hundred poems were set at the residence of the former Regent and Chancellor, now a lay monk.
The fourth poem reading impermanence in the fall. Counting the springs that remain brings with it the knowledge of age. The lay monk of the headnote is Fujiwara no Kanezane, who also appears in the headnote to the fifth poem of Book One.
The Monk Shune was a son of Minamoto no Toshiyori and a monk of Todai-ji. He kept a poetry salon at his own quarters and taught poetry to Kamo no Chomei. In Book One he is the poet of the sixth poem.
The time is when the cherries fall; no place is given.
The occasion was the presentation of the hundred poems.

The auxiliary in the first line expresses possibility: the springs he will still be able to look at.
The second line names the springs left to him. Shunzei's hundredth poem counted springs already spent and Princess Shokushi's hundred and first counted the past; this one counts what is to come, so that three poems divide one action between past and future.
The third line repeats the verb of the hundred and first poem.
The particle in the fourth line carries the sense of not only the flowers but the tears as well.
The poem closes on a noun. Using the verb for scattering of tears borrows a word that belongs to blossom, so that falling tears and falling flowers share one verb: the method of Shigeyuki's hundred and nineteenth poem, which laid rain, tears and petals together.

Author

The Monk Shune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other