尋ぬべき人は軒端の古里に
それかと薫る庭の橘
それかと薫る庭の橘
- Roma-ji
-
Tazunubeki hito wa nokiba no furusato ni sore ka to kaoru niwa no tachibana
- English Translation
-
He whom I should seek
is here at the eaves' edge, in
this old dwelling place
and I wonder if it's him
the orange in the garden
- Meaning
- The one who should have come does not; and at the eaves of this old house the orange in the garden gives a scent that might be his.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Summer Poems 243
Headnote: topic unknown.
The sixth poem on orange blossom. The person who ought to come does not, and only the scent arrives. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The poet is recorded only as unknown.
The time is the orange season; the place is the garden of an old house.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The auxiliary in the first line expresses what ought to be: the one who should come. That he does not is taken as given.
The second line joins that person to a place. The word names the edge of the eaves, the boundary between inside and out; Princess Shokushi's fifty-second poem in Book One set a plum there.
The word in the third line means an old village or an old dwelling, running through the spring poems of this anthology and used here in summer.
The fourth line means that the scent suggests him. Behind it stands the Kokin Wakashu poem about the scent of the sleeves of one long known, and the fragrance appears in the person's place.
The poem closes on a noun. The person does not come and the scent does. The two hundred and thirty-eighth poem asked who would be left to remember; here the one to be remembered is himself absent, and nothing but the scent remains.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Where the orange sheds its flowers, under the eaves the remembering fern hangs, and, calling the past the dew comes spilling over
- In the dark of May in a light sleep taken through the short summer night the orange blossom's fragrance lies cool upon my sleeve here
- The cuckoo has found the orange blossom's fragrance and follows it, and if it calls, is it longing for someone it knew of old
- Where the orange gives its fragrance, if I doze there even in my dream there is the scent of the sleeves of one I knew long ago