Konu made mo hana yue hito no mataretsuru haru mo kurenuru miyamabe no sato

English Translation

Even unarrived
for the flowers' sake I found
myself awaiting
them; and now the spring is gone
here in this deep mountain place

Meaning

No one came, and for the flowers' sake I found myself waiting all the same; and now the spring too has ended, here in the village deep in the hills.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 170

Headnote: composed on the theme of the last day of the third month at a mountain house.
The fourth poem grieving over the end of spring. The topic is the close of the third month seen from a house in the hills; the last day of that month was the last day of spring and served as a subject for poems on the season's end.
Fujiwara no Koretsuna was a poet of the late Heian period.
The time is the last day of the third month; the place is a village deep among the hills.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line means: though no one came. That nobody in fact arrived is conceded at the outset.
The word in the second line marks cause: because the flowers were there.
The auxiliary in the third line is spontaneous in force: he found himself waiting. He did not set out to wait; the flowers made the waiting happen of itself.
The particle in the fourth line carries the sense that on top of the absence of callers the spring is gone as well.
The poem closes on a noun. Gyoson's hundred and sixty-eighth poem anticipated that no one would come once spring had ended; this one reports that no one came even while it lasted, and the solitude is the more complete. It belongs with Hachijoin no Takakura's fifty-fourth poem in Book One, in which the plum fell with no visitor at all.

Author

Fujiwara no Koretsuna

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other