Oshinabete kozue aoba ni narinureba matsu no midori mo wakarezarikeri - Kinyo Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

おしなべて梢青葉になりぬれば
松の緑もわかれざりけり

Roma-ji: Oshinabete kozue aoba ni narinureba matsu no midori mo wakarezarikeri
English Translation: Everywhere alike
the treetops have all become
a mass of green leaves,
so that even the pine's green
can no longer be told apart
Meaning: Now that the treetops everywhere have all turned to green leaves, even the evergreen pine can no longer be told apart from the rest.
Commentary: Book Two Summer Poems 96

Because in summer every treetop has turned uniformly green, the pine, which usually stands out, can no longer be distinguished from the other trees. The poem captures the whole scene of hills wrapped in fresh green through the single point of the pine.
Its wit lies in reversing the idea, found in the Analects of Confucius, that the evergreen pine shows its constancy only in the cold of winter: in summer, when everything is green, even the pine goes unnoticed.
The author, Shirakawa-in, is Emperor Shirakawa, the seventy-second sovereign. The first son of Emperor Go-Sanjō, he continued to rule as a retired emperor after abdicating, and he commanded Minamoto no Toshiyori to compile this anthology.

First line, 'oshinabete', means all alike, taking in every tree as far as the eye can see.
Second line, 'kozue aoba ni', is every treetop turned to green leaves, a step further into the season than 'mingled among the green leaves' in poem 95.
Third line, 'narinureba', adds ba to the realis form of the perfective nu to form a definite condition: since they have become so entirely.
Fourth line, 'matsu no midori mo', is the color of the evergreen pine, deliberately singled out as the tree normally set apart from others.
Final line, 'wakarezarikeri', means it could not be told apart, closing with the exclamatory keri. Waku, to distinguish, appears again in 'wakite oramashi' in poem 99.
Author: Retired Emperor Shirakawa
Source: Kinyo Wakashu
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