水口に我や見ゆらむかはづさへ
水の下にて諸声になく
水の下にて諸声になく
- Roma-ji
-
Minakuchi ni ware ya miyuramu kawazu sae
mizu no shita nite morogoe ni naku - English Translation
-
At the water’s mouth,
am I perhaps seen there?—
even the frogs,
beneath the water, raise
all their voices as one.
- Meaning
- Am I perhaps seen there at the mouth where the water flows in? Even the frogs, beneath the water, raise their voices together; so I too weep in unison with you.
- Commentary
-
Episode Twenty-Seven: "I alone"
A certain man went to a woman’s place and stayed for a single night, and after that he did not go again.
This poem was composed by the man, who overheard from the shadows the woman’s poem: "I alone, I thought, had one so given to thought—none other there was; yet beneath the water’s surface, there was one more."
The man composes this saying that he too weeps in sorrow at not being able to meet her. The woman, however, had meant that the one beneath the water was her own reflection; the man mistakenly believes that it is himself reflected upon the surface.
"All their voices" suggests the frogs crying together in unison, an image for raising one’s voice in concert.
- Source
- Ise Monogatari
- Other
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- Unaware, somehow, at my sleeves the harbor is all in tumult; only because a great Chinese ship has drawn near.
- I alone, I thought, had one so given to thought— none other there was; yet beneath the water’s surface, there was one more.
- Why has it come to pass that thus our meeting time has grown so hard to gain?— though we had bound our vow as if to let no water leak.
- At blossoms never have I failed in lamenting— always it was so; yet on this night alone there has been no time like this.