Saku hana wa suguru toki aredo aga kouru kokoro no uchi wa yamu toki mo nashi

咲く花は過ぐる時あれど我が恋ふる
心のうちはやむ時もなし

Roma-ji: Saku hana wa suguru toki aredo aga kouru kokoro no uchi wa yamu toki mo nashi
English Translation: Flowers that blossom
have their season and they pass,
but the love I feel
within the confines of my heart
never knows a time to cease
Meaning: Blooming flowers have a time when their season passes, but the love within my heart never knows a moment's pause.
Commentary: Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2785

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Expressing Feelings through Things"
Flowers that bloom have a time when they pass their prime, but the speaker's heart in love never ceases: the poem sets love against flowers to declare its endlessness. Contrasting the fading flower with the unfading heart, it voices the depth and pain of longing in plain words.
In this sequence on flowers, the two preceding poems linked the opening of a flower and its colour to love showing itself, while this poem takes up the passing of a flower's season and sets against it the endlessness of love. "Suguru toki" in the upper verse and "yamu toki" in the lower verse face each other, measuring the time of flowers and the time of love on different scales.
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather the love poems of people whose names have not come down to us.

First line, "saku hana wa": "blooming flowers." The particle "wa" sets off the flowers and contrasts them with "kokoro no uchi wa" below.
Second line, "suguru toki aredo": "though they have a time to pass." "Do" is a concessive particle: granting the flowers' fading, the poem turns to love.
Third line, "aga kouru": "that I love," with "kouru," the attributive form of "kou," modifying "kokoro" (heart).
Fourth line, "kokoro no uchi wa": "within my heart." Like "saku hana wa" in the first line, it is set off with "wa," placing flower and heart side by side.
Fifth line, "yamu toki mo nashi": "there is no time it ceases." It answers "suguru toki" in the second line, and the particle "mo" stresses a longing that never pauses even for a moment.
Source: Manyoshu
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