Yoshinoyama hana no furusato ato taete munashiki eda ni harukaze zo fuku

English Translation

On Yoshino's slopes
the old home of the blossom
where no track is left
through the emptiness of boughs
the wind of the spring blows on

Meaning

On Yoshino, in the old home of the flowers, no one comes any more, and the spring wind blows through the empty branches.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 147

Headnote: on the theme of the last of spring.
The topic named is the remnant of spring, its ending. Yoshino after the fall of the blossom is given as an old village to which no one comes.
The poet, given as Regent and Chancellor, is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune; this is his second appearance in this book, after the hundred and thirty-sixth poem.
The time is after the cherries have fallen; the place is Yoshino in Yamato Province.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line raises the place, its sixth appearance in this book after the hundredth, hundred and fourteenth, hundred and twenty-first, hundred and thirty-second and hundred and thirty-third poems.
The second line means the old village of the flowers. The word for an old place runs through the spring poems of this anthology; the opening poem of Book One called Yoshino a village where the snow had fallen and time had passed. The same ground that announced spring's arrival appears here as the place the flowers have left.
The third line means that the tracks of visitors have ceased. It is the situation of Teika's hundred and thirty-fourth poem, where no footprint marked the garden, moved to a mountain.
The fourth line means branches with no flowers on them, the same sight as the branch-tips of the previous poem: two poems looking at one thing.
An emphatic particle governs the verb at the close. Only the wind that stripped the flowers still blows in the same place.

Author

Fujiwara no Yoshitsune

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other