咲きにけりながらの山の桜花
風に知られで散りも過ぎなむ
風に知られで散りも過ぎなむ
- Roma-ji
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Sakinikeri nagara no yama no sakurabana kaze ni shirarede chiri mo suginamu
- English Translation
-
Now they're in full bloom,
on Nagara's mountainside,
the cherry blossoms—
unknown to the wind, I pray,
may they pass their time and fall.
- Meaning
- The cherries on Mount Nagara have come into bloom—may they live out their time and fall without the wind ever finding out.
- Commentary
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Spring Poems 69
Headnote: "Blossoms dread the wind"
Rejoicing that the cherries on Mount Nagara have bloomed, the poet hopes they will reach their natural time of falling without being found and scattered by the wind. As the topic "blossoms dread the wind" suggests, the flowers' aversion to the wind becomes the poet's own wish to protect them.
In the Ruijū text the headnote reads "Blossoms shun the wind," and the Ruijū and Teika texts read the last line haru mo suginamu ("may spring pass"). Some characters in the last line of the base text are hard to read, so the reading chiri mo suginamu from the Waka Database text has been adopted.
Line 1: keri delights in the blooming, and the poem pauses here.
Line 2: nagara joins Mount Nagara in Ōmi with nagara, "just as they are," suggesting flowers left as they bloomed.
Line 3 addresses the cherry blossoms.
Line 4: de is a negative conjunctive, "without being known to the wind"; like "do not let the wind find out" in 47, it treats the wind as the flowers' enemy.
Line 5: namu is a particle of wish, hoping the flowers will pass their time without being blown away. Its topic pairs with the next poem, 70, "blossoms resent the wind."
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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