The water that runs
through the split bamboo pipe turns
over and is gone—
and still I am not done with
living in these palace walls
- Meaning
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The water running through the bamboo pipe is never the same water twice—and still I am not done with living here inside these walls.
- Commentary
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Volume Seven: Tsunemasa Leaves the Capital
This is Tsunemasa's reply, made on the spot, to the poem the Ninna-ji abbot had just given him.
He had served in this household as a boy, been given the lute Seizan here, and learned music here. To that place he has come back with his armor off, to return the instrument and answer the verse. He will leave the abbot, go west, and be killed at Ichi-no-tani in Volume Nine.
The kakei is a length of split bamboo used as a water pipe. The water in it is always running through, never twice the same.
That water stands for everything that changes. People and the world turn over like water in a pipe. One thing does not: this residence, and the days he spent in it. That is the frame.
The pivot is sumiakanu, which carries both "never tire of living here" and "water that runs clear." The clarity of the water in the pipe and his unwearying attachment to the house meet in one word. And it takes up the akazu of the abbot's poem, so the exchange passes the word properly from one hand to the other.
Water is offered as the changing thing, the place as the unchanging one. Yet in fact he is at that moment leaving the place that does not change. What the poem says and the situation in which it is said contradict each other head on. That he does not put that contradiction into words is the restraint of the verse.
kuretake……a variety of slender bamboo.
kakei……a pipe of split bamboo or wood for conducting water.
kawaredomo……though it is replaced.
sumiakanu……never tiring of living there; puns on water running clear.
miya no uchi……within the residence.
Seizan……the famous Chinese lute.
Omuro……the abbot of Ninna-ji; here Prince Shukaku.
warawa……a boy in service to a noble household.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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