Furu yuki ni iro madowaseru ume no hana uguisu nomi ya wakite shinoban - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

降る雪に色まどはせる梅の花
鶯のみやわきてしのばん

Roma-ji: Furu yuki ni iro madowaseru ume no hana uguisu nomi ya wakite shinoban
English Translation: Its color mingled
and confused with falling snow,
the plum's white blossom—
will the warbler alone, then,
tell it apart and love it?
Meaning: The plum blossoms, their color lost among the falling snow—will the warbler alone tell them apart and hold them dear?
Commentary: Book Sixteen Miscellaneous Poems I 1442

Headnote: "The plum."
This is the second poem of the sequence on the warbler and the plum. It asks whether the warbler alone can tell apart and hold dear the plum blossoms whose color is lost among the falling snow. The headnote gives only the topic and records nothing of the circumstances of composition.
The author, "Sugawara, Posthumous Chancellor," is Sugawara no Michizane. No author's name is given in the text; the poem is attributed to Michizane, following the author of the preceding poem.

The first line, "furu yuki ni," presents the falling snow. The conceit of snow and white plum blossoms being hard to tell apart also appears in Ki no Tomonori's poem in the Kokin Wakashū: "Yuki fureba / kigoto ni hana zo / sakinikeru / izure o ume to / wakite oramashi" ("Since snow has fallen, on every tree flowers have bloomed—which should I tell apart as plum and break off?").
The second line, "iro madowaseru," says that the color of the plum blossoms is lost in the whiteness of the snow so that they cannot be distinguished. The "ru" is the auxiliary of continuation.
The third line, "ume no hana," here shifts the sequence's subject from the warbler to the plum. Poems on the plum follow.
The fourth line, "uguisu nomi ya," brings in the warbler, taking up "uguisu no koe," the last line of the preceding poem. The particle "ya" expresses a question.
The last line, "wakite shinoban," closes the kakari-musubi of the particle "ya" with the attributive form "n." "Wakite" means "telling apart," the same word used in Tomonori's poem.
Author: Sugawara no Michizane
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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