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Kokinshu #52
Tuesday, 18 January 2011 07:10 Written on seeing cherry blossoms arranged in a vase in front of the Somedono Consort.
As the years pass by
my age only gets older --
and yet despite this,
when I see these flowers here
I have not one troubled thought.
toshi fureba
yowai wa oinu
shika wa aredo
hana o shi mireba
mono omoi mo nashi
---L.
As the years pass by
my age only gets older --
and yet despite this,
when I see these flowers here
I have not one troubled thought.
—9 November 1210
Original by Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (804-872), the first commoner, and first Fujiwara, to become regent (to his grandson, Emperor Seiwa). His daughter Akirakeiko (or Meishi), a wife of Emperor Montoku (ruled 850-858) and the mother of Seiwa, was called the Somedono Consort after Yoshifusa's villa near the capital. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu, and it's hard not to read it as a moment of triumphant smugness over having installed his daughter as empress. More literally, he doesn't have "thoughts about things," which in classical literature is usually understood as brooding upon personal affairs. The emphasis of shi might be more accurately rendered with "these here flowers," but that's decidedly off tone.toshi fureba
yowai wa oinu
shika wa aredo
hana o shi mireba
mono omoi mo nashi
---L.