行く末を誰偲べとて夕風に
契りかをかん宿の橘
契りかをかん宿の橘
- Roma-ji
-
Yukusue o tare shinobe tote yūkaze ni chigiri kaokamu yado no tachibana
- English Translation
-
Who is to recall
it in the days to come, then
that in the evening
wind it made its promise, this
orange tree beside my house
- Meaning
- For whom, in the days to come, does it make this promise of scent on the evening wind, the orange at my house?
- Commentary
-
Book Three Summer Poems 239
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
The second poem on orange blossom. Where the previous poem asked who would remember its author, this one asks whom the tree means to make remember. The original gives no fresh headnote.
The poet, given by his court title, is Minamoto no Michitomo, a son of the Inner Minister Minamoto no Michichika and one of the compilers of the Shin Kokin Wakashu. In Book One he is the poet of the forty-sixth poem and in Book Two of the ninety-sixth.
The time is an evening in the orange season; the place is the poet's house.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The first line means the time to come. The previous poem supposed a death; this one likewise looks forward.
The verb in the second line means to think of with longing, in the imperative, and a quotative particle follows: saying, remember it.
The third line sets the scene with the wind that carries the scent.
The fourth line asks whether the tree promises to be fragrant, with an interrogative particle governing the auxiliary. To promise a scent presupposes the idea that this scent calls up memory, so that the fragrance is laid up as a provision for someone's future remembering.
The poem closes on a noun. The previous poem asked from the side of the person; this one asks after the intention of the tree, and the two treat one subject from opposite positions.
- Author
- Minamoto no Michitomo
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Through the long rain's clouds the moon is beginning now to break clear, and it had been waiting a short while for that, the cuckoo, and calls
- Who will there be then to remember, at the scent of orange blossom once I too have come to be one of the people of old
- The past will not come again, and I take it for now, and fall asleep and at my dreaming pillow the orange gives its fragrance
- Where the orange sheds its flowers, under the eaves the remembering fern hangs, and, calling the past the dew comes spilling over