Niouran kasumi no uchi no sakurabana omoiyarite mo oshiki haru kana - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

匂ふらん霞のうちの桜花
思ひやりても惜しき春かな

Roma-ji: Niouran kasumi no uchi no sakurabana omoiyarite mo oshiki haru kana
English Translation: How they must be glowing,
the cherry blossoms that lie
within the haze:
even thinking of them, how
I grieve for this passing spring
Meaning: How lovely they must be, the cherry blossoms hidden in the haze. Even imagining them from afar, how I grieve for the passing spring.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems I 1016

Headnote: "Sent after glimpsing a woman faintly through a screen."
This is the first poem of a sequence on love sung through spring blossoms. Imagining the beauty of cherry blossoms veiled in haze, the poet lays love for a woman barely glimpsed over his regret for the passing spring. According to the headnote, he sent it after catching a faint glimpse of a woman through a screen.
The author, "Kiyohara no Motosuke," was a grandson of Kiyohara no Fukayabu and the father of Sei Shōnagon. As one of the Five Men of the Pear Chamber he took part in compiling the Gosen Wakashū, and he is counted among the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.

In the first line, "niou" means to glow with beauty, and "ran" conjectures about the present, imagining the loveliness of blossoms he cannot see.
The second line, "kasumi no uchi no," means "within the haze," overlaid with the woman hidden behind a screen.
The third line, "sakurabana," stands for the woman faintly glimpsed. The poem breaks here, inverted with the first line.
The fourth line, "omoiyarite mo," means "even imagining from afar."
The last line closes with the exclamatory "kana." Regret for a spring passing before it can be clearly seen is overlaid with love for a woman almost but not quite visible. It is a variation, in a spring scene, on the love by sight that has run since the opening of the book, and the next poem by Yoshinobu also sings of spring flowers blooming and falling, so two poems of love through spring blossoms follow each other.
Author: Kiyohara no Motosuke
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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