昨日まで花の散るをぞ惜しみこし
夢か現か夏も暮れにけり
夢か現か夏も暮れにけり
- Roma-ji
-
Kinō made hana no chiru o zo oshimikoshi yume ka utsutsu ka natsu mo kurenikeri
- English Translation
-
Until yesterday
I had grieved for scattering flowers—
so it seemed to me;
was it a dream, or was it real?
Summer too has reached its end.
- Meaning
- Until just yesterday I was grieving over the falling blossoms—is this a dream or reality? Summer, too, has come to its end.
- Commentary
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Summer Poems 175
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed at the end of summer"
Only yesterday, it seems, the poet was grieving over the falling blossoms of spring, yet now he finds that summer too is over, and he marvels at the swiftness of time. From the end of spring to the end of summer feels like a single moment, so that he cannot tell whether it was a dream or reality.
Kamo no Mabuchi marked this poem with a circle. According to the source's note, line 3 differs in the Jōkyō edition and was emended following the Ruijū text; this edition follows that emendation.
Line 1, "until yesterday," stresses how little time has passed since spring.
Line 2: zo is a binding particle, pointing strongly to what was grieved over.
Line 3 is the attributive concluding zo, and the poem pauses here. It is the same word, oshimikoshi, that opens 133 at the head of the summer section; the section that began in regret for spring now closes looking back on spring in the same word, so the beginning and end answer each other.
Line 4, "a dream or reality," is the same as in poem 72 of Book One; the wonder directed there at falling cherry blossoms is here turned on the whole of summer gone by.
Line 5: keri expresses realization, the poet's feeling that summer has already ended.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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