Alas! The cherry blossoms
Have flowered in vain and faded
During these long rains
Interminable as my own
Melancholy reveries.
(Tr. Helen Craig McCullough)
***
The cherry blossoms
Have passed away, their color lost,
While to no avail
Age takes my beauty as it falls
In the long rain of my regret.
(Tr. Earl Miner)
***
Color of the flower
Has already passed away
While on trivial things
Vainly I have set my gaze,
In my journey through the world.
(Tr. Clay MacCauley)
***
Color of the flower
Has already faded away,
While in idle thoughts
My life passes vainly by,
As I watch the long rains fall.
(Revision of above)
***
The hue of the cherry
fades too quickly from sight
all for nothing
this body of mine grows old --
spring rain ceaselessly falling.
(Tr. Jon LaCure)
***
See how the blossoms
That are falling about me
Fade after long rain
While, quietly as in prayer,
I have gazed my life away.
(Tr. Tom Galt)
***
The flowers withered
Their color faded away
While meaninglessly
I spent my days in the world
And the long rains were falling.
(Tr. Donald Keene)
***
As in the long and weary rain
The hue of flowers is all gone,
So is my young grace spent in vain
In these long years I lived alone.
(Tr. H.H. Honda)
***
Cherry blossoms pale after long rain,
Beauty useless:
Without you
I live in a world drained of color.
(Tr. ??)
***
The colors of the flowers fade
as the long rains fall,
as lost in thought,
I grow older.
(Tr. Rexroth & Atsumi)
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This is perhaps the most famous of her poems. It appears under No. 9 in the "One Hundred
Poems by One Hundred Poets" collection, as well as in the Kokinshû. There is a huge
variety of translations and, as one can see, some render the subject quite differently. I
am most partial to Keene's version. The translations by Honda and the one following it are
somewhat odd: the first puts a rhyming straitjacket on the tanka and suffocates it, the
second... well, it could have been another poem!
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