神山の麓に咲ける卯の花は
誰が標結ひし垣根なるらむ
誰が標結ひし垣根なるらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Kamiyama no fumoto ni sakeru unohana wa taga shime yuishi kakine naruramu
- English Translation
-
The deutzia flowers
blooming at the foot of
the sacred mountain,
whose sacred ropes have bound
this hedgerow, I wonder
- Meaning
- The deutzia blooming at the foot of the sacred mountain: whose hedge could it be, roped off with sacred cords?
- Commentary
-
Book Two Summer Poems 102
The deutzia blooming white at the foot of the sacred mountain of Kamo is fancied as a hedge someone has roped off with sacred cords. Fitting for a holy mountain, the white flowers are seen as a sacred boundary.
Kamiyama is the mountain behind the Upper Kamo Shrine, and the time of the Kamo Festival in the Fourth Month is also deutzia season. Echoing the festival poem 97 in this book, it conveys early summer as a season of rites.
From poem 98 through poem 103 in this book, poems on the deutzia follow one another, likening the flower to snow, to moonlight, to hedges and to sacred ropes.
First line, 'kamiyama no', is the sacred mountain behind the Upper Kamo Shrine in Kyoto, revered as the place where the god descends.
Second line, 'fumoto ni sakeru', means blooming at the foot.
Third line, 'unohana wa', sets out the topic, and the lower half offers an image for the white flowers.
Fourth line, 'taga shime yuishi', uses shime yuu, to stretch a rope as a sign of possession or of sacred ground. The whiteness of the deutzia is seen as the paper streamers hung from sacred ropes.
Final line, 'kakine naruramu', uses the conjectural ramu, answering the question 'whose' in the fourth line: whose hedge could it be. The hedge of deutzia in the preceding poems is here turned into the fence of a sacred precinct.
- Source
- Kinyo Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Unohana no sakanu kakine wa nakeredomo na ni nagaretaru tamagawa no sato
- Next Poem
-
Shizu no me ga ashibi taku ya mo unohana no saki shi kakareba yatsurezarikeri