let my span of years
be added to your eight thousand—
if it may be so
then keep what thus remains
as a memory of me
- Meaning
- If my years could be added to your long life, then keep what remains as a memory of me.
- Commentary
-
Book Seven Felicitations
The poem expresses a wish that, having shared time with one blessed with long life, the speaker might at least be remembered. It does not literally mean giving one’s lifespan to another, but rather asks that the speaker be kept in memory alongside the other’s enduring years.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- counting one by one the grains of sand upon the shore of the wide sea’s edge— let them be the numbered years of your long enduring life
- on Shio-no-yama at the jutting shore of the strand where plovers abide— they seem to cry “eight thousand years” for the span of your noble reign
- thus as I am now in one way or another I live lingering on still— if only there were a way to meet your eight thousand years
- by the mighty gods was this staff perhaps cut forth— as I take it up now even the slope of a thousand years seems one I may yet cross