Kokinshu #80

Written upon seeing, as she lay ill with the blinds closed to avoid the wind, that the cherry [blossoms] that had been plucked for her were beginning to scatter.

    During my period
of seclusion, unaware
    of the course of spring,
even the cherry blossoms
I waited for have faded.

—1 March 2011

Original by Fujiwara no Yoruka, who is believed (the records aren't conclusive) to have been a daughter of Fujiwara no Takafuji by a different wife than the presumed half-sister who married Emperor Uda and became the mother of Emperor Daigo. Yoruka's dates are unknown, but she entered service as an attendant in the imperial household in 871 under Emperor Seiwa and served at least four successors, last appearing in the records with a promotion upon her nephew Daigo's accession in 897; of her 4 poems in the Kokinshu, those with dateable contexts are from the 870s. Her mother (under her religious name, Kyoshin) also has a poem in the Kokinshu. (Curiously, some English editions mangle Yoruka's gender, including one that gets it correct on other poems.) Tarekomeru, here "seclude," literally meant "to seclude oneself behind lowered blinds," rather than the common modern meaning of "to hang low over."


tarekomete
haru no yukue mo
shiranu ma ni
machishi sakura mo
utsuroinikeri

---L.