Shiogama no ura no matsukaze kasumu nari yasoshima kakete haru ya tatsuramu

塩釜の浦の松風霞むなり
八十島かけて春や立つらむ

Roma-ji: Shiogama no ura no matsukaze kasumu nari yasoshima kakete haru ya tatsuramu
English Translation: At Shiogama bay
the wind through the pines sounds hazy;
across the islands,
eighty islands far and wide,
has springtime risen, I wonder?
Meaning: The pine wind on Shiogama Bay seems to sound through haze—has spring risen across all those many islands?
Commentary: Spring Poems 8

Headnote: "Spring arriving by the sea"
Picturing Shiogama Bay, a famed poetic site in Mutsu, the poet sings of spring arriving by the sea, sensing that even the sound of the wind in the pines is hazy. Its distinctive touch lies in describing something heard, the pine wind, with a visual word, "hazy." Kamo no Mabuchi judged this, too, a work of the poet's middle period.
In the Ruijū text it appears among the miscellaneous poems with the headnote "Composed on the theme of spring arriving by the sea."

Line 1 names Shiogama, a famous poetic place in Mutsu (present-day Miyagi Prefecture).
Line 2, "the wind through the pines," is the wind blowing through the shore pines, including its sound.
Line 3: nari expresses inference from sound or atmosphere; from the pine wind's voice the poet senses the haze, and the poem pauses here.
Line 4: yasoshima ("eighty islands") means many islands, suggesting those of Matsushima Bay near Shiogama, and kakete means "reaching across."
Line 5: the particle ya with the attributive ramu forms a kakarimusubi that conjectures an unseen arrival of spring. It pairs with 2, which inferred spring in the capital from haze; here spring is inferred at the seashore.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
Prev Poem: Asagasumi tateru o mireba mizunoe no yoshino no miya ni haru wa kinikeri
Next Poem: Ika ni shite nonaka no matsu no furinuramu mukashi no hito no hikazu ya arikemu