KKS 20
Text
[題しらず]
[Topic unknown]
[よみ人しらず]
[Poet unknown]
梓弓おして春雨今日降りぬ明日さへ降らば若菜摘みてん
|
azusayumi |
The birch bow is drawn |
Notes
- Birch bow
- An azusayumi is a bow made from the Japanese cherry birch. Its purpose here is as a pillow word connecting to haru (spring), because the bow is drawn (haru). The word oshite is here inserted between; some scholars say this was another word having to do with drawing the bow, but its main purpose in the poem is to mean "everywhere."
Other sources:
Analysis
The last of the anonymous group of poems leads from the general "field" poems into the ones where young shoots are actually being picked.
The main interpretive question here is what the fourth line means. The majority opinion is that if it will only rain tomorrow too, the spring shoots will finally grow and we can go pick them. Katagiri rejects this reading because the previous poem already says that people in the capital are picking shoots. He supports a theory from Kokin eigashō and Seigi: if it also rains tomorrow, we'll just have to get wet since we're so eager to go pick shoots. We're not going to be put off another day.
