玉藻刈る井手のしがらみ春かけて
咲くや川瀬の山吹の花
咲くや川瀬の山吹の花
- Roma-ji
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Tamamo karu ide no shigarami haru kakete saku ya kawase no yamabuki no hana
- English Translation
-
Where they cut sea-grass,
at the weir along the Ide,
reaching through the spring,
oh, how they bloom in the shallows—
the kerria's yellow flowers.
- Meaning
- At the weir of Ide where they cut the jeweled water-weed, the kerria blooms all through the spring along the river shallows.
- Commentary
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Spring Poems 115
Headnote: "Composed on yellow kerria"
The poet sings of kerria blooming through the spring in the river shallows near the weir on the Ide. Overlapping the weir's "stretching across" with blooming "across" the spring, the poem has a beautiful cadence. Kamo no Mabuchi marked it with a circle; he argued that kakete properly means extending from here to there and is illogical when said of kerria, a misreading by poets of the time of the Kokinshū poem about a warbler singing "into spring" while snow still falls, yet he said the excellence of its rhythm deserves praise.
This poem was included in the Shinchokusen Wakashū. In the Ruijū text the headnote reads "On seeing kerria fall."
Line 1, tamamo karu ("where they cut jeweled water-weed"), modifies Ide, evoking a riverbank where fine weeds are cut.
Line 2: shigarami is a weir made by driving stakes and weaving bamboo or brushwood to slow the current.
Line 3 means "through the spring," resonating with "stretched across" the weir; Mabuchi found it illogical.
Line 4: ya is an exclamatory particle, expressing delight in the blooming.
Line 5 ends on a noun; the next poem, 116, has the same closing.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
- Prev Poem
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Yamabuki no hana no sakari ni narinureba ide no watari ni yukanu hi zo naki
- Next Poem
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Tamamo karu ide no kawakaze fukinikeri minawa ni ukabu yamabuki no hana