Midori naru matsu ni kakareru fuji naredo onoga koro to zo hana wa sakikeru

English Translation

Though it is a vine
caught on a green pine that keeps
its colour always
the wisteria has bloomed
in its own good time, and gone

Meaning

It is only a vine caught on the evergreen pine, and still the wisteria has flowered at its own season.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 166

Headnote: composed on wisteria caught in a pine.
The fourth poem in the run on wisteria. The original gives no fresh attribution, which indicates the same poet as before. From the sight of wisteria on a pine, the poem observes that each flower has a season of its own.
The poet is Ki no Tsurayuki, as in the previous poem.
The time is the end of spring; the place is where wisteria has climbed a pine.
The occasion was the sight taken as a subject.

The first line means always green, and gives the pine's evergreen colour. It is the same presentation of the unchanging as in Yoshitsune's sixty-sixth poem in Book One, on the colour of moss.
The second line means caught and twined on the pine. Wisteria climbs by winding on other trees, and that habit is assumed.
The concessive particle in the third line turns the sentence: though it lives by leaning on the pine.
The fourth line means: saying that this is its own season. The word for its own marks the flowering as governed by the wisteria's time rather than the pine's.
The emphatic particle governs the attributive form at the close. Depending on another tree, it still chooses when to bloom, and the unchanging pine is set against the vine whose hour has come. Following a poem that stretched the spring out, this one likewise takes the lateness of the wisteria for its subject.

Author

Ki no Tsurayuki

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other