Tatsu nami o yuki ka hana ka to fuku kaze zo yosetsutsu hito o hakaru beranaru - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

立つなみを雪か花かと吹く風ぞ
よせつゝ人をはかるべらなる

Roma-ji: Tatsu nami o yuki ka hana ka to fuku kaze zo yosetsutsu hito o hakaru beranaru
English Translation: The rising waves seem
now snow, now blossoms in bloom—
it is the wind's work,
sending them in, again and
again, to trick us, it seems
Meaning: Making the rising waves look now like snow, now like blossoms, the blowing wind keeps driving them ashore, as if to fool us.
Commentary: 27 The Eighteenth Day of the First Month: Waves Seen as Snow and Blossoms

On the eighteenth day of the first month the party still remained in the same place. The sea was rough, so the boat did not set out. This anchorage was charming whether seen from far or near, but the hardship of the journey left no room for any thought. The men, it seems, recited Chinese verse to lift their spirits. Passing the time idly without sailing, people composed one poem after another on the waves.
Those who compose poems this day are "a certain person," "someone," and "the old man who was master of the boat." The last means the old man who headed the boat, and is read as referring to the former governor, the head of the party.
Hearing the previous two poems and finding them fairly good, the old man who was master of the boat composed this poem to ease the hardship of a journey of many months.
While people were discussing this poem, another person listened intently and then composed a poem of his own. But it ran to thirty-seven syllables, and everyone laughed in spite of themselves. Its author was most displeased. The diary notes that no one could imitate it even if they tried, and that even written down it would be hard to read through.

The first line, "Tatsu nami o," means "the rising waves." The second line, "yuki ka hana ka to," means "so they seem to be snow or flowers." In the third line, "fuku kaze zo," "zo" is an emphatic particle.
The fourth line, "yosetsutsu," means "driving the waves ashore again and again," with "tsutsu" a conjunctive particle of repetition. The final line, "hito o hakaru beranaru," means "seems to be deceiving us," "hakaru" meaning to trick or deceive. "Beranaru" is the attributive form of the conjectural auxiliary "beranari," answering "zo" in a kakari-musubi construction.
Taking up the previous two poems, which saw the waves as snow and as flowers respectively, this poem gathers both together and shifts the agency to the wind: it is the wind that deceives people by making the waves seem both snow and flowers. It is a witty poem that sums up the two before it.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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