Kokinshu #351

[lnhammer]

Written on a depiction of someone flower-viewing amid scattering cherry blossoms on a folding screen for the celebration of the fiftieth birthday of the [Nijô] Empress held by Prince Sadayasu.

    The months and days
that pass by in idleness
    aren't noticed, yet
the days of spring spent watching
the flowers seem few indeed.

—6 January 2013

Original by Fujiwara no Okikaze. Sadayasu (b. 870) was a younger son of Emperor Seiwa and Nijô (see #4), who turned fifty in 891. Omitted-but-understood words: "days of" and "seem," both strongly implied by the construction. More literally it's be "idly"/"uselessly" than "in idleness," but the latter's overtone seems to fit better, to my ear. The flattery here is the implicit comparison of Nijô's beauty to that of spring flowers.


itazura ni
suguru tsukihi wa
omôede
hana mite kurasu
haru zo sukunaki

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I mildly disagree with "days of spring" and "seem." If you read the lines as they are, the message is "We may not notice the time passing by each day, but we see so few springs [before our death]" which seems a lot better as a poem than "I'm bored, and spring is too short" (although admittedly the latter is almost a tl;dr of Heian literature in toto, now that I look at it...) --Matt

[lnhammer]

That would be why I read it that way -- out of habit. But you have a point about making it "few springs" rather than "not much of spring."

Hmm.

---L.