Oshimedomo chirihatenureba sakurabana ima wa kozue o nagamu bakari zo - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

惜しめども散り果てぬれば桜花
今は梢を眺むばかりぞ

Roma-ji: Oshimedomo chirihatenureba sakurabana ima wa kozue o nagamu bakari zo
English Translation: 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
Meaning: Grieve as I may, the cherry has fallen to the last flower, and all I can do now is look at the bare branch-tips.
Commentary: Book Two Spring Poems II 146

Headnote: topic unknown.
After the appeals to the wind, this poem gives up asking and accepts the fact: nothing is left but to look at flowerless branches. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127-1192) was the fourth son of Emperor Toba and ruled long as cloistered sovereign after his abdication. He is also known as the compiler of a collection of popular songs. Princess Shokushi, poet of the hundred and first and hundred and thirty-seventh poems, was his daughter, and Prince Koreakira of the hundred and thirty-eighth his grandson.
The time is after the cherries have fallen; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The concessive particle in the first line means: grieve though I do. Where the two preceding poems made requests, this one begins by admitting that grief changes nothing.
The verb in the second line means to do a thing to the end, in a perfect concessive form with a conditional particle: not one flower is left.
The third line names the object.
The fourth line means: now, at this point, the branch-tips. Only the place where the flowers were remains.
A limiting particle in the closing line means that this is all there is, and the emphatic particle at the end of the sentence strengthens the flat statement. The single act of still looking at an empty branch is all that is given, and resignation is stated quietly. Yoshitsune's hundred and forty-seventh poem also takes empty branches, and the two stand together.
Author: Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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