Kokinshu #70

(Topic unknown.)

    If we told them, "Wait!"
and they did not scatter but
    stayed on the branches,
what could we possibly prefer
over these cherry blossoms?

—19 January 2011

Original author unknown sayeth the editors, but the poem is included in Sosei's collected poems. While a rhetorical question fits his manner, it's grammatically compressed in a way that strikes me as not typical for him -- specifically, the comparison is elided, provoking much commentary pondering what exactly the question is. How to read it is also complicated by the fact that in Kokinshu aesthetics, it is precisely because the cherry blossoms scatter that they are admired (compare #53 and #71, which latter the editors set in reply), but just a few generations before, this would have been a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer (and is so understood later by a character in The Tale of Genji). The original says just "cherry," but the "scatter" indicates it's really about the flowers and it sounds weird without "blossoms."


mate to iu ni
chirade shi tomaru
mono naraba
nani o sakura ni
omoimasamashi

---L.