Kokinshu #334

(Topic unknown.)

    Though the plum flowers
are there, they cannot be seen
    -- for the snow that shrouds
the eternal heavens
is falling on everything.

Some say this poem is a poem by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.

—4 November 2012

(Original author unknown.) A jump forward to not just mistaking snow for flowers, but the actual first flowers of spring -- matching the poems early in Book I, especially #6ff. In contrast to the previous, this reads like a product of the Kokinshu period, as the trope of "elegant confusion" (here, of white flowers with snow) wasn't borrowed from Chinese models until a couple generations after Hitomaro died. For the stock epithet hisakata no, see #84; it's applied to the ama ("sky/heaven") part of amagiru, "to obscure the sky." "Are" is another omitted-but-understood verb. Compare to the similar #40, which has the same second line. (I should probably revise that one to bring this out this connection.)


ume (no) hana
sore to mo miezu
hisakata no
amagiru yuki no
nabete furereba

kono uta wa, aru hito no iwaku, kakinomoto (no) hitomaro ga uta nari

---L.