Kokinshu #73

(Topic unknown.)

    How they resemble
our cicada-shell world!
    -- even while we watch
the cherry blossoms flower,
they're already scattering.

—6 February 2011

(Original author unknown.) Utsusemi no ("of/like a cicada-shell") is a stock epithet for the world -- the idea being the Buddhist one that human existence is as empty and ephemeral as the discarded final juvenile molt of a cicada. The cherry blossoms (here reversed as hanazakura instead of sakurabana, for no reason I can explain) again could be address, exclamation, or unmarked topic/subject.

Another picture that reminded the photographer of this poem.


utsusemi no
yo ni mo nitaru ka
hanazakura
saku to mishi ma ni
katsu chirinikeri

---L.