year unknown
.君なくて誠に多太の桜哉
kimi nakute makoto ni tadai no sakura kana
without you--
how vast
the cherry blossom grove
This undated haiku is a version of one written in 1817:
kimi nakute makoto ni tadai no kodachi kana
without you--
how vast
is the grove
R. H. Blyth reads the above haiku's fourth kanji as "large"; A History of Haiku (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1964) 1.385. Since this choice makes the compound tadai ("great"), which makes sense in the context, I have followed his lead in my translation of both this and the 1817 poem, even though this adds an extra syllable to the "middle seven" phrases.