Think of it: even
on a journey one believes
will be brief, still one
longs for the home left behind—
think then what this must be like
- Meaning
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Consider it: even on a journey one expects to be short, one still longs for home.
- Commentary
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Volume Two: The Floating of the Stupas
This is the second of the two poems Yasuyori wrote on his thousand stupas. Where the first, on the Satsuma sea, is a message to his parents, this one has no addressee at all.
The stupas were set on the waves one by one. Where they would come ashore, and into whose hands, was entirely unknown. The poem is written on that premise.
As it happened, one of them reached Itsukushima in Aki, was picked up by a monk connected with Yasuyori, and carried to the capital. The poem came before the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa and passed by way of Shigemori to Kiyomori. Even a man like Kiyomori, the tale says, was moved—which prepares the pardon of the following year.
It opens with an imperative, "consider it," and never says to whom. It is addressed to whatever stranger might one day pick the stupa off the sand.
The argument is plain. Even on a journey one expects to be brief, home is still missed. How much more, then, for a man who cannot know whether he will ever return—and there the poem stops. The particle dani does the work, loading everything onto what is not said. He does not describe his own suffering; he leaves it to the reader to supply.
Where the first poem goes to a specific person, this one goes to no one in particular. Floated together, the two verses turn the very condition of not knowing who will find them into poetic form. And in the event the poem was found by a stranger: a call with no addressee was answered.
omoiyare……consider it; imagine it.
shibashi……for a little while.
tabi dani mo……even on a journey.
nao……still, even so.
furusato……one's native place; here, the capital.
mono wo……since it is so; with a note of lament.
mokuzu……seaweed drifting on the waves.
Itsukushima……the shrine in Aki province, deeply revered by the Taira.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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