Ko no moto no sumika mo ima wa arenubeshi haru shi kurenaba tare ka toikomu

English Translation

Under the branches
my dwelling will fall to waste
from this time onward
for when the spring has gone by
who will come to visit me

Meaning

My dwelling under the trees will go to ruin now: once the spring has ended, who will come?

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 168

Headnote: composed at the end of spring, while he was in religious training.
The second poem grieving over the end of spring. A dwelling that people visited for the flowers must fall to waste once the season is over. The headnote assigns it to the period of his training.
The Archbishop Gyoson (1055-1135), a son of Minamoto no Motohira, rose to that rank. He is remembered for the severity of the training he undertook through the provinces. A poem of his appears in Book Nine of this anthology as well.
The time is the end of spring; the place is a hut built beneath the trees.
The occasion was composition during his training.

The first line means under the trees, so that the hut stands beneath the flowering branches.
The particle in the second line carries the sense of the dwelling as well: not only the flowers go but the house too.
The auxiliary in the third line expresses what must follow: it is bound to fall to ruin.
In the fourth line an emphatic particle and a conditional form together mean: once the spring has ended.
An interrogative particle in the closing line governs the attributive form. The question is close to rhetorical, carrying the sense that no one will. It is the subject of Norikane's hundred and twenty-fifth poem, in which callers ceased after the fall; there the result is reported, and here it is anticipated.

Author

The Archbishop Gyoson

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other