Kokinshu #83

[lnhammer]

Written when someone said nothing scatters as quickly as cherry blossoms.

    I cannot believe
the cherry blossoms scatter
    especially quickly,
for a person's heart can change
even before the wind blows.

—3 April 2011

(Original by Ki no Tsurayuki.) "For" is interpolation but is clearly the intended relationship between clauses, while "change" is a sort of double-meaning (not quite a pivot-word) of "blow," brought out by the contrast of the emphatic zo with the "even" of mo. The blowing is actually a negative potential form ("cannot blow"), which I have trouble understanding as anything but part of an implied temporal sequence.


sakurabana
toku chirinu to mo
omooezu
hito no kokoro zo
kaze mo fukiaenu

---L.