Waga kokoro ika ni seyo to ka yamabuki no utsurou hana ni arashi tatsuramu

わが心いかにせよとか山吹の
うつろふ花にあらし立つらむ

Roma-ji: Waga kokoro ika ni seyo to ka yamabuki no utsurou hana ni arashi tatsuramu
English Translation: This heart of mine, then,
what would you have it do?
Upon the kerria,
on its blossoms fading now,
must a storm wind rise as well?
Meaning: What would you have my heart do? Must a storm rise against the kerria blossoms even as they fade?
Commentary: Spring Poems 122

Headnote: "On seeing the wind blow over yellow kerria"
Seeing the wind blow over the kerria, the poet laments: what would you have my heart do, when even a storm assails blossoms already fading? The helplessness of a heart grieving for falling flowers is expressed through a forceful question. Kamo no Mabuchi questioned the word arashi ("storm") in the last line.
The Ruijū text places it in the section of poems from another manuscript and the printed edition. The last line varies greatly among texts: the Ruijū text reads arashi tatsuran, the Teika text differs in the fourth and last lines, and Sasaki Nobutsuna in his annotated edition reads it with voicing as "arashi ramu." Since the last line of the base text is partly hard to read, the reading arashi tatsuramu, close to the Ruijū text, has been adopted, and the fourth line is construed as hana ni.

Line 1, "This heart of mine," names the poet's own heart as the one who grieves.
Line 2: ka is interrogative, asking "what would you have me do?"
Line 3 names the kerria of the topic.
Line 4: utsurou means to fade or fall, naming flowers already beginning to wane.
Line 5 concludes ka with the attributive ramu. The wind that made the flowers glow in the preceding poem, 121, appears here as a storm that harms them, forming a contrast.
Author: Minamoto no Sanetomo
Source: Kinkaishu
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