Chirihatete hana no kage naki ko no moto ni tatsu koto yasuki natsugoromo kana

English Translation

They have fallen all
and no shade of flowers now
under the branches
and it is easy to leave
in this summer robe of mine

Meaning

The flowers have fallen and there is no shade of them under the tree; in this summer robe it is an easy thing to go.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 177

Headnote: composed on the changing of clothes.
The second poem on the change of clothes. That it is easy to leave a tree with no flowers under it says, by implication, how hard it had been to leave in spring. The headnote gives the observance as the topic.
The poet, given as former Archbishop, is Jien, a son of the Regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi. He served four times as abbot of the Tendai school and wrote the historical work Gukansho. In Book One he is the poet of the thirty-third poem and in Book Two of the ninety-fifth.
The time is the first day of the fourth month; the place is beneath a tree whose flowers have gone.
The occasion was the set topic.

The first line means fallen entirely, the verb used in Go-Shirakawa's hundred and forty-sixth poem in Book Two to mark the end of the flowering.
The second line denies any shade of flowers, and in the denial says that the poet had stayed beneath them while they lasted.
The third line fixes the place. Gyoson's hundred and sixty-eighth poem in Book Two also set a dwelling under the trees; the ground beneath a flowering tree is written of again and again as a place where people linger.
The verb in the fourth line means to leave a place, and it also carries the sense of cutting cloth, so that it belongs with the robe below. A pivot and an associated word are held in one syllable.
The poem closes on the same noun as the one before, so that two poems end alike and stand together as a pair on the change of clothes. That it is easy to leave now says the opposite of itself: while the flowers were there it was hard, and a summer poem is still looking back at spring.

Author

Jien

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other