
Early Spring is always an exciting time to look forward to, and this is a great poem for that time of year:
Japanese | Romanization | Translation |
人はいさ | Hito wa isa | With people, well |
心も知らず | Kokoro mo shirazu | you can never know their hearts; |
ふるさとは | Furusato wa | but in my old village |
花ぞむかしの | Hana zo mukashi no | the flowers brightly bloom with |
香に匂ひける | Ka ni nioi keru | the scent of the days of old. |
The author, Ki no Tsurayuki, is among the composers of the official anthology, the Kokin Wakashū (古今和歌集), and coined the Six Immortals of Poetry therein. He wrote the famous and fictional Tosa Diary, and is also the cousin of Ki no Tomonori who composed poem 33.
Note: Here the reference to “blossoms” is for plum blossoms in particular, called umé (梅).
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