Furusato o kawa to mitsutsu mo wataru kana fuchise ari to wa mube mo iikeri

English Translation

My old home — is that
it? — I cross the river now
and look at it too
Deep pools turn to shallows: how
rightly the old saying goes

Meaning

Is that my old house over there? I cross the river, watching it as I go. Deep pools become shallows — how right the old saying was.

Commentary

10 Yesterday's Deep Pool

The Lady of the Palace Guards sold her house by the embankment and moved to a place called Awata. One day she happened to pass in front of her former house, and composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
She appears repeatedly in this book: the eighth section gives her exchange with the Prince of the Ministry of Central Affairs, and the seventy-first mentions her living in the house by the embankment. This section comes after she has given it up.
The embankment is that of the Kamo river, where she had formerly lived. Awata, where she moved, lies east of the capital.
What prompted the poem was passing in front of the house she had sold. The prose uses the word for crossing, so the scene is written as one that takes place while crossing the water.
The section ends with the poem; no listener's response and no later event is recorded. The lower verse draws on an anonymous poem in the Kokin-shū, which asks what in this world stays constant, since yesterday's deep pool in the Asuka river is today's shallows.

The word for river also carries the sense of that one over there, so the scene is of her looking across at a house that now belongs to someone else and asking whether it is really hers.
The grammar of the third line marks a continuing action: she keeps her eyes on it as she goes. The verb for crossing belongs to the river, but the prose around the poem uses the same word, so that verse and narrative are tied together by a single term.
Deep pools and shallows are the deep and shallow places of a river, and by extension the turning of the world. The lower verse takes up the older poem on the deeps and shallows of the Asuka river and agrees with it.
The closing phrase means: how rightly that was said. She does not give way to sorrow but meets the loss with a piece of reasoning, and that is the tone of the poem.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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