花の色は...

The flowers withered,
Their color faded away,
While meaninglessly
I spent my days in the world
And the long rains were falling

This is a famous tanka regarding 桜 translated into English by Donald Keene. How do you compare it with the Japanese original? Apparently it is very different. First of all it has lost a playful touch in wording that the original has. In the original there are some pun of words like 長雨and 眺め. That's really sophisticated play with words. However, if the language is different, this loss is inevitable.
Prof. Keene, who really was well-versed in Japanese literature, must have taken a bold determination to get rid of those things of relatively less importance. I can imagine that.
Apart from that, if you read this without any knowledge about the Japanese original, read it as English poem written by an English poet for example, how would you feel? How would a British or American feel? Is it a good poem or bad one? I would say it's not so bad but not so good. It is not so good because it has no rhyme in it. Again this is a matter of play in words, or I should better say it misses a musical factor of poems. It is not so bad because it still leaves us some room to read between the lines, especially between the second last and the last line.
One thing I feel annoying is articles used in it. I modified it.

Flowers withered
Color faded away
While meaninglessly
spending my days.
Long rains are falling.

This sounds much better to me. Again compare mine with the original translation.

The flowers withered,
Their color faded away,
While meaninglessly
I spent my days in the world
And the long rains were falling

Keene's translation is too much claims about "who" or "whose". いちいち「誰の」だとか「誰が」だとかうるさいんだよ:-)！This is fatally detrimental to the Japanese original.
"world" is not needed because it is only used for pun. When the pun was lost in the translation there's no need to bring it here. Also the last conjunction "And" is completely unnecessary. The last line should be in the present tense.
Even if Dr. Keene is specialist of Japanese literature I guess he still missed something subtle about it. This may be a limitation of studying a language after grown up in a different language environment. This thought is kind of depressing.