桜花風にし散らぬものならば
思ふことなき春にぞあらまし
思ふことなき春にぞあらまし
- Roma-ji
-
Sakurabana kaze ni shi chiranu mono naraba omou koto naki haru ni zo aramashi
- English Translation
-
Cherry blossoms,
if only they did not scatter
in the blowing wind,
spring would be a time of year
without a care in the world.
- Meaning
- If cherry blossoms did not scatter in the wind, spring would be a season without a single care.
- Commentary
-
Book One Spring Poems 36
If only the cherries did not scatter in the wind, spring would have been a season free of worry; the poem laments falling blossoms. It shares the thought of Ariwara no Narihira's Kokinshū poem, "if there were no cherries at all in this world," expressing from another angle the cares that flowers bring.
The first line, "cherry blossoms," repeats the first line of the preceding poem as the cherry poems continue.
In the second line, "shi" is an emphatic particle, stressing if only they did not fall in the wind.
The third line, "if," is a hypothesis of the same form as the third line of 23.
The fourth line, "without a care," means free of troubled thoughts.
The last line, "spring would be," closes a kakari-musubi with "zo" and the attributive of the counterfactual "mashi."
- Author
- Onakatomi no Yoshinobu
- Source
- Shika Wakashu
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Sakurabana chirasade chiyo mo miteshigana akanu kokoro wa satemo ari ya to
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Sakurabana chirishiku niwa o harawaneba kiesenu yuki to narinikeru kana