Tsuki ya aranu haru ya mukashi no haru naranu waga mi hitotsu wa moto no mi ni shite - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

月やあらぬ春や昔の春ならぬ
我が身ひとつはもとの身にして

Roma-ji: Tsuki ya aranu haru ya mukashi no haru naranu waga mi hitotsu wa moto no mi ni shite
English Translation: Is that not the moon?
Is the spring not the spring
of times long ago?
This body of mine alone
remains as it was before
Meaning: Is the moon not last year's moon? Is the spring not the spring of old? Only I myself remain just as I was, while everything else seems to have changed.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 747

Headnote: "A man had been exchanging words, against his true wishes, with a woman living in the western wing of the palace of the Empress of Gojō, but around the tenth of the first month she went away into hiding. Though he heard where she was, he could not send her word. In the spring of the following year, on a night when the plum blossoms were at their height and the moon was lovely, longing for the year before, he went to that western wing and lay on the bare, ruined floorboards until the moon sank, and composed this."
This famous poem by Ariwara no Narihira opens Love Poems V. The moon and the spring should be the same as last year, yet because she is gone everything looks different, and he alone seems left behind unchanged. It is a lament of loss.
According to the headnote, he had been exchanging words with a woman living in the western wing of the residence of the Empress of Gojō (Fujiwara no Junshi), but in the new year she was taken elsewhere. Knowing where she was but unable to write, he returned on a moonlit night the next spring, when the plum was in bloom, and lay on the ruined floor until the moon set.
The story also appears in section four of The Tales of Ise, and the woman is thought to be Fujiwara no Takaiko, later a consort of Emperor Seiwa. The poem is often cited as the prime example of the Kana Preface's judgment of Narihira: "too much feeling, too few words."
Ariwara no Narihira was the fifth son of Prince Abo, a son of Emperor Heizei, and his mother was Princess Ito, a daughter of Emperor Kammu. Given the surname Ariwara and made a commoner, he rose to Provisional Middle Captain of the Right Inner Palace Guards. He is one of the Six Poetic Immortals and the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
Love Poems V, whose theme is the end of love, begins with this look back at a lost love across the passage of time and closes with poem 828, "so be it, the world." The contrast between unchanging nature and the changing human world runs through the whole book.

The first line uses the questioning particle ya, resolved by the attributive aranu: is the moon not last year's moon? Some read it rhetorically, as "surely the moon is the same."
The second line repeats ya to question the spring. "Long ago" means last spring, when she was still there. The first two lines form a parallel pair.
The third line, naranu, resolves the ya of the second line, and the poem breaks here. The questions about moon and spring end, and the lament of the lower verse begins.
The fourth line's hitotsu, "alone," sets the speaker against the moon and the spring. While all around seems changed, he alone is left behind.
The last line trails off with ni shite. The words "yet all else has changed" are left unsaid, and this lingering sense of feeling outrunning language is the poem's defining quality.
Author: Ariwara no Narihira
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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