Asamidori somete kaketaru aoyagi no ito ni tama nuku harusame zo furu

浅緑染めて掛けたる青柳の
糸に玉貫く春雨ぞ降る

Roma-ji: Asamidori somete kaketaru aoyagi no ito ni tama nuku harusame zo furu
English Translation: Dyed a pale green hue
and hung up like silken threads,
the green willow boughs—
stringing pearls along their threads
the spring rain is falling down.
Meaning: On the green willow, hung like threads dyed pale green, the spring rain falls, stringing pearls along them.
Commentary: Spring Poems 43

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Willows in the rain"
The poet depicts spring raindrops falling on the willow, which looks like threads dyed pale green and hung out, as if stringing pearls onto them. Likening the willow to dyed thread and raindrops to pearls, it is a colorful and delicate poem. Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle.
The poem draws on Archbishop Henjō's Kokinshū poem on the spring willow that twists pale green threads and strings white dew as pearls. Some characters in the fourth line of the base text are hard to read, so the common reading ito ni tama nuku has been adopted.

Line 1, asamidori ("pale green"), is the color of young willow leaves, taken directly from the opening of the source poem.
Line 2, "dyed and hung up," likens the willow branches to dyed thread.
Line 3, "the green willow," is the word shared by the willow group.
Line 4, "stringing pearls along their threads," echoes "strung on the threads" in 40.
Line 5 is the same closing as 41, a kakarimusubi with zo and the attributive. The group of willow poems closes here.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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