いつの間に紅葉しぬらん山桜
昨日か花の散るを惜しみし
昨日か花の散るを惜しみし
- Roma-ji
-
Itsu no ma ni momiji shinuran yamazakura kinō ka hana no chiru o oshimishi
- English Translation
-
When did it happen
that you turned to autumn red,
mountain cherry tree?
was it only yesterday
I mourned your blossoms falling?
- Meaning
- When did you turn red with autumn, mountain cherry? Was it only yesterday that I grieved to see your blossoms fall?
- Commentary
-
Book Five Autumn Poems II 523
Headnote: "On seeing a cherry tree beginning to turn red."
This is the first poem of the autumn-leaves sequence. It seems only yesterday that the speaker mourned the falling blossoms, yet the mountain cherry has already turned red. According to the headnote, it was composed on seeing a cherry tree begin to change color.
The author was a son of Emperor Murakami who served as Minister of Central Affairs and was called the Later Chūsho Prince. He excelled in learning and poetry.
The scene is autumn as the leaves begin to turn, beneath a mountain cherry.
The direct occasion was seeing the leaves of a cherry tree begin to turn.
The first line, "itsu no ma ni," means "without my noticing," expressing surprise at how swiftly time has passed.
In the second line, "nu" is perfective and "ran" the attributive of the conjectural "ramu": "has it turned red?" The poem breaks here.
The third line, "yamazakura," names the reddened tree by inversion; the tree admired for its blossoms in spring now catches the eye with autumn leaves.
In the fourth line, the interrogative "ka" is bound to "shi" in the last line.
In the last line, "shi" is the attributive of the past auxiliary "ki": "was it yesterday that I grieved over the falling blossoms?" The half year from spring to autumn feels like "yesterday," and the swiftness of time is shown through the contrast of blossoms and red leaves on the same mountain cherry. The autumn-leaves sequence opens with a poem looking back to spring flowers. Like 460, which saw time's passage in seedlings becoming reaped rice in the same field, it sees the passing of time in one thing's seasonal change.
- Author
- Prince Tomohira
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
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- The Long Month as well— how many dawns with the moon has it come to now? the moon upon the sedge grass grows ever more desolate
- The magpies' bridge laid high across the clouds—autumn now drawing to close, in the depths of night does frost spread its chill across it all?
- On the mountainside where a light mist drifts and whirls the bright autumn leaves, though they are not clearly seen, can be known for what they are
- The treetops that crown Kaminabi's Mimuro— how must they look now, when common hills everywhere are touched by passing showers?