Akanaku ni chirinishi hana no iroiro wa nokorinikeri na kimi ga tamoto ni

English Translation

Not that I had tired
of the flowers that have fallen
but their many hues
have stayed behind after all
here upon your sleeve, I see

Meaning

The flowers fell before anyone had tired of them; and all their colours, I find, have stayed behind on your sleeve.

Commentary

Book Three Summer Poems 222

Headnote: to someone to whom he had sent a medicine ball on the fifth day of the fifth month.
The second poem on the festival. The headnote records that it was sent with a scented medicine ball, an ornament exchanged on that day, made of sweet flag and mugwort with artificial flowers of many colours and five-coloured threads hanging from it.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Tsunenobu, who rose to Major Counsellor and was accomplished in Chinese verse and music as well as poetry. In Book Two he is the poet of the hundred and twenty-second and hundred and forty-eighth poems, and in this book of the hundred and ninety-seventh.
The time is the fifth day of the fifth month; no place is given.
The occasion was the sending of the ornament with a poem.

The first line means: not that anyone had had their fill. The verb runs through Book Two and appears in this book at the hundred and eighty-fifth and hundred and ninety-third poems.
The second line names the flowers that fell in spring.
The third line gives their several colours.
In the fourth line an exclamatory particle follows the perfect auxiliary, so that the surprise comes through directly. It is the form of Motozane's hundred and eighty-eighth poem and of Shune's sixth in Book One.
The poem closes on a noun. The colours of the artificial flowers on the ornament are taken for the colours of spring blossom, transferred and preserved. There is wit in the sender saying of his own gift that the colours have stayed there, and in making the recipient's sleeve the place where the flowers went.

Author

Minamoto no Tsunenobu

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other