浜千鳥跡はみやこにかよへども
身は松山に音のみぞ鳴く
身は松山に音のみぞ鳴く
- Roma-ji
-
Hamachidori ato wa miyako ni kayoedomo
mi wa Matsuyama ni ne nomi zo naku - English Translation
-
Like a plover on
waves of Matsuyama’s shore,
my traces go on
to the capital, yet I
cry with sound alone.
- Meaning
- Like a plover by the shore of Matsuyama, my traces can pass on to the capital, yet my own body remains here in Matsuyama, able only to cry out in sorrow.
- Commentary
-
Volume One, Shiramine.
Confined at Matsuyama, the Retired Emperor sent this poem together with copied sutras to the Emperor in the capital. However, the courtier Shinzei suspected that it contained resentment toward the Emperor and had it sent back.
After his death, this came to be the turning point at which the Retired Emperor became a mass of vengeful resentment, cursing the world.
The source of the poem is the "Hōgen Monogatari," where it is said to have been composed by the Retired Emperor. The "traces of the plover" refer to his handwriting, that is, the copied sutras: though the sutras reached the capital, they did not convey the sorrowful sound (voice) that issued from his living body. The poem gives voice to his anguish at the gap between expression and lived reality.
- Author
- Ueda Akinari
- Source
- Ugetsu Monogatari
- Other
-
- Even meeting you floats on tears—my very self; to one like me, what use is the drug that grants no death?
- Like a boat borne on waves of Matsuyama’s sea, washed in and then left— soon it comes to emptiness.
- Even if, my lord, the jeweled bed of old, though you once lay there, now that it has come to this, what use could it be?
- The sorrow of my life no one will tell for me; O bird of evening call at Ōsaka Pass, cry that autumn, too, has waned.