Yo no naka wa koi shigeshi eya kaku shi araba ume no hana ni mo naramashi mono o

世の中は恋繁しゑやかくしあらば
梅の花にもならましものを

Roma-ji: Yo no naka wa koi shigeshi eya kaku shi araba ume no hana ni mo naramashi mono o
English Translation: In this world of ours
how thick the pangs of love! Oh well,
if this is how it is,
a blossom of the plum tree
I would rather be instead
Meaning: In this world the pangs of love never cease. Oh, if it must be so, I would rather have become a plum blossom.
Commentary: Book Five Miscellaneous Poems 819

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Thirty-two poems on plum blossoms, with preface"
Because the world is so full of love's troubles, the poet says he would rather become a plum blossom. Envying the plum's purity, he lightly mocks the tangles of a love-plagued world and adds amusement to the feast.
This is one of the thirty-two poems of the Plum Blossom Banquet, held on the thirteenth day of the first month of Tenpyō 2, when officials of Dazaifu and provincial governors of Kyushu gathered at the residence of the Governor-General Ōtomo no Tabito and composed poems on the plum trees in his garden. The Chinese preface describes how, in the auspicious first month of early spring, the air was fine and the breeze gentle, the plums opened white like face powder before a mirror, and the orchids gave off a scent like a perfume sachet; it is also famous as the source of the era name Reiwa. The preface closes by proposing that, just as Chinese poetry has its pieces on falling plum blossoms, the company should compose short poems on the garden plums. The poem is signed "Ōtomo, Governor of Bungo."
The poet, Ōtomo no Miyori, was the son of Ōtomo no Miyuki and is thought to have been Governor of Bungo at the time. Identifying "Ōtomo daibu" with Miyori follows the prevailing view.

First line, "yo no naka wa": the human world, the same words that open the book's first poem, 793, though here they point not to impermanence but to the tangles of love.
Second line, "koi shigeshi eya": "shigeshi" means many and ceaseless, and "eya" is an exclamation of resignation; the poem breaks here.
Third line, "kaku shi araba": "if it is like this."
Fourth line, "ume no hana ni mo": "a plum blossom, at least," longing for a flower that knows no love.
Fifth line, "naramashi mono o": the counterfactual "mashi": if only I could become one. In 864, Kichita no Yoroshi in the capital answered with exactly these lower lines.
Author: Ōtomo no Miyori
Source: Manyoshu
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