Chiru o mite kaeru kokoro ya sakurabana mukashi ni kawaru shirushi naruran - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

散るを見て帰る心や桜花
昔に変はるしるしなるらん

Roma-ji: Chiru o mite kaeru kokoro ya sakurabana mukashi ni kawaru shirushi naruran
English Translation: Seeing them scatter,
this heart that turns and goes home,
O cherry blossoms,
could it be the very sign
that I am changed from of old?
Meaning: This heart that watches the blossoms fall and simply goes home, O cherry blossoms, is it the sign that I have changed from what I was?
Commentary: Book Seventeen Miscellaneous Poems II 1065

Headnote: "Composed on seeing the blossoms at Shirakawa after I had left the world"
This poem was composed on seeing the blossoms at Shirakawa after he had left the world. This heart that sees the blossoms fall and goes home, O cherry blossoms, is it a sign that I am changed from of old, he says. In the past, seeing the flowers scatter, he could hardly bear to leave them, but now he watches them fall and simply goes home. Noticing this change in his heart, he quietly reflects that perhaps it is the sign that he has truly become one who has cast off the world.
The author, "the monk En'i," is Saigyō. His lay name was Satō Norikiyo; he was a guardsman of the north quarters of Retired Emperor Toba, but took the tonsure at twenty-three. He traveled through the provinces and left many poems.
It shares with 1068 of this book, where the poet in the spring of the year after taking the tonsure turns back the heart he had dyed in the color of the flowers, the theme of a change in the heart that views the blossoms after leaving the world.

First line, "chiru o mite": "seeing them scatter."
Second line, "kaeru kokoro ya": "ya" is an interrogative binding particle closing with "ran" in the fifth line. It is the heart that watches the blossoms fall and simply goes home.
Third line, "sakurabana": an address to the blossoms, placed in the third line as in 1052 and 1053 of this book.
Fourth line, "mukashi ni kawaru": "changed from of old." It forms a pair with "inishie ni kawarazarikeri" in the first and second lines of 1055 of this book over whether things change from the past. 1055 sings of blossoms unchanged from of old, this poem of a heart that views them changed.
Fifth line, "shirushi naruran": "shirushi" means a sign or proof, and "ran," the attributive of the auxiliary of present conjecture, closes the binding.
Author: Saigyō
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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