富士川のせぜの岩越す水よりも
はやくも落つる伊勢平氏かな
はやくも落つる伊勢平氏かな
- Roma-ji
-
Fujigawa no zeze no iwa kosu mizu yori mo
hayaku mo otsuru Ise Heishi kana - English Translation
-
Faster than water
leaping the rocks in the shoals
of the Fuji stream,
down they came falling—these men,
these Taira out of Ise
- Meaning
- Faster than the water leaping the rocks in the shallows of the Fuji, down they came falling—these Taira out of Ise.
- Commentary
-
Volume Five: The Gosechi Dances
This is the second of the lampoons on the rout at the Fuji. This one works the name of the river itself into the verse.
It takes the water of a rapid running over rocks as its measure and says they were faster. Otsuru means both water falling and an army falling back; the place of the battle and the speed of the flight are joined in a single verb.
What carries the sting is the phrase "Taira out of Ise." A house that had given the realm a chancellor and the emperor an empress, and held half the sixty-odd provinces among its members, is called again by the name of country warriors from Ise. It is the name the nobles used in Volume One when they jeered at Tadamori's admission to the palace. After decades at the summit, the lampoon drags the house back to the name it started with.
It answers the Volume Four verse about the men of Ise in scarlet-laced armor caught in the weirs of the Uji. There, Ise warriors drowned in the Uji; here, Ise Taira running from the Fuji. The pattern of mocking them by river and by provincial name runs across two volumes. The decline of the Taira is recorded first at rivers, and by anonymous poems.
seze……the shallows here and there in a river.
iwa kosu mizu……water running over rocks.
hayaku mo……how quickly.
otsuru……to fall, of water; to fall back, of an army.
Ise Heishi……the Taira of Ise province; the house's older name.
sugame……a squint; the word used against Tadamori in Volume One.
rakusho……an anonymous lampoon.
- Author
- Sei Shōnagon
- Source
- Heike Monogatari
- Prev Poem
-
Hiraya naru Munemori ika ni sawaguran
hashira to tanomu suke o otoshite - Next Poem
-
Fujigawa ni yoroi wa sutetsu sumizome no
koromo Tadakiyo nochi no yo no tame