散る花の忘れがたみの峰の雲
そをだに残せ春の山風
そをだに残せ春の山風
- Roma-ji
-
Chiru hana no wasuregatami no mine no kumo so o dani nokose haru no yamakaze
- English Translation
-
Of the fallen bloom
the keepsake I would not lose
is cloud on the peak
leave me that much, if no more
you spring wind off the mountain
- Meaning
- The cloud on the ridge is what keeps the fallen blossom from being forgotten: leave me at least that much, spring wind off the mountain.
- Commentary
-
Book Two Spring Poems II 144
Headnote: for the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
A run of poems addressing the spring wind and trying to hold back some trace of the flowers begins here. This is the first: the cloud that has stood for blossom is all that is asked for. The headnote assigns it to the contest in fifteen hundred rounds.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Yoshihira (1184-1240), a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Kanezane and younger brother of Yoshitsune, the poet of the hundred and thirty-sixth and hundred and forty-seventh poems.
The time is after the cherries have fallen; the place is a mountain ridge.
The occasion was submission to the contest.
The compound in the second line means something kept so that a thing may not be forgotten. The idea of a keepsake connects it with the hundred and forty-third poem, and the word is used in the fourteenth, forty-seventh and ninety-sixth poems of Book One.
The third line names that keepsake. White cloud has served throughout this book as a figure for blossom, and now that the flowers are gone the cloud alone keeps their whiteness.
In the fourth line a pronoun points back to the cloud, and a particle means at least, if nothing more, the word also used in the hundred and thirty-fourth and hundred and thirty-fifth poems. The verb is an imperative addressed to the wind.
The poem closes on a noun, so that the one addressed comes last, in inversion. The wind that stripped the flowers is asked to leave their substitute standing. The poem that follows ends on the same words and appeals to the same wind.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshihira
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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
- Flowers, you as well in the springs when we must part remember me then the pains I have taken through each blooming and each falling
- Calling the flowers hold what is left of them here among the clouds, and glow a little while longer you spring wind off the mountain
- Grieve as I may, still they have fallen, every one the cherry flowers and all that is left me now is to gaze at the branches