Haru yukite aki made to ya wa omoiken kari ni wa arazu chigirishi mono o - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

春ゆきて秋までとやは思ひけん
かりにはあらず契りしものを

Roma-ji: Haru yukite aki made to ya wa omoiken kari ni wa arazu chigirishi mono o
English Translation: Going off in spring,
did I think it would be autumn
before you came back?
not a passing thing, like geese,
our love, so we pledged
Meaning: When you went away in spring, did I ever think it would be autumn before you returned? We pledged that ours was no passing thing, like the wild geese.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 1417

Headnote: "When the Priestess Consort withdrew from the palace around spring and did not return for a long time."
This is the seventh poem of the sequence on sky and clouds. He reproaches the Priestess Consort: he never thought she would withdraw in spring and not return by autumn, when they had pledged that theirs was no passing bond. According to the headnote, it was composed when the Priestess Consort withdrew from the palace around spring and did not return for a long time.
The author, "Poem of the Tenryaku Era," is Emperor Murakami. A son of Emperor Daigo, he took the throne as the sixty-second sovereign, and his reign was praised as the Tenryaku rule. Tenryaku is the era name of his reign.

The first line, "haru yukite," means "going away in spring." The geese returning north in spring are overlaid with the consort withdrawing to her home in spring.
In the second line, "aki made to ya wa," "ya wa" is rhetorical: "did I think it would be until autumn? I never did." The geese return in autumn, but the consort does not.
The third line, "omoiken," closes the kakari-musubi of "ya wa" with the attributive "ken." The poem breaks after the third line.
In the fourth line, "kari ni wa arazu," "kari" is a pivot word joining "kari" (wild geese) and "kari" (passing, temporary). It takes up the "geese" of the preceding poem.
The last line, "chigirishi mono o," means "though we pledged," "mono o" being a concessive exclamation. Following Emperor Daigo, who invoked the geese to reproach a consort in the preceding poem, his son Emperor Murakami also invokes the geese to reproach a consort, so that poems by two generations of emperors are placed side by side with the same conceit.
Author: Emperor Murakami
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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