Kyō wa mata ayame no ne sae kakesoete midare zo masaru sode no shiratama

English Translation

And today again
even the sweet flag's root, and
the sound of my tears
and the tangle grows the worse
white jewels lying on my sleeve

Meaning

Today again the sweet flag's root is hung up, and my weeping with it, and the tangle only worsens: white jewels on my sleeve.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 221

Headnote: when he wrote a hundred poems on personal reflection.
This opens a run on the festival of the fifth day of the fifth month. The root of the sweet flag is laid over the sound of weeping, and the tangle of tears is the subject. The reflection of the headnote means an account of the poet's own circumstances; Shunzei's fifteenth poem in Book One comes from such a sequence too.
The poet, given by his court title, is Fujiwara no Shunzei; this is his fourth appearance in this book, after the two hundred and first, second and tenth poems.
The time is the fifth day of the fifth month; no place is given.
The occasion was the hundred poems of personal reflection.
On that day a contest was held in which the length of sweet flag roots was compared, and long roots were prized.

The first line fixes the day: today, the festival, once again.
The word for root in the second line also carries the sound of weeping, and the particle marks addition: tears, and now the voice of weeping as well.
The third line means to hang one thing beside another, so that the hanging of sweet flag at the eaves and the adding of a voice to tears occupy the same word.
The word in the fourth line means both a tangle of roots and a disordered heart, and an emphatic particle governs the attributive form.
The poem closes on a noun. The white jewels are pearls, and here they are tears. Root, weeping, tangle and jewel each pair a word of the plant with a word of the mind, and the festival serves as a vessel for personal reflection.

Author

Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other