Isonokami Furu no wasada o uchikaeshi uramikanetaru haru no kure kana

English Translation

At Furu the field
of early rice is turned back
over on itself
and I cannot turn my grief
at the ending of the spring

Meaning

As the early-rice field at Furu is turned and turned again, so I go over my grievance and cannot bring it out: the end of spring.

Commentary

Book Two Spring Poems II 171

Headnote: topic unknown.
The fifth poem grieving over the end of spring. The turning of a field serves as the pivot, and the poem gives a resentment that cannot be brought to completion. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet, known as the daughter of Shunzei, was in fact his granddaughter and adopted daughter; this is her third appearance in this book, after the hundred and twelfth and hundred and fortieth poems.
The time is the end of spring; the place is Furu at Isonokami in Yamato Province.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.

The first line is a pillow word leading into the place name of the second, as in the eighty-eighth and ninety-sixth poems of Book One.
The second line names a field planted with early rice.
The third line means to turn a field with a hoe and at the same time to do a thing over and over. It is the device of Kintada's eighty-ninth poem in Book One, which turned and turned a rough field, using the language of farm work for a state of mind. Turning a field also exposes the underside of the soil, and the sound of that word leads into the word for resentment below.
The verb in the fourth line means to be unable to carry a thing through: the resentment cannot quite be brought out, and the feeling is left unfinished.
The poem closes on a noun with an exclamatory particle. What is resented is the spring, and the spring is at this moment leaving, so that the object of the grievance is disappearing as it is felt.

Author

The Daughter of Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other