Wasuru ya to idete koshikado izuku ni mo usa wa hanarenu mono ni zo arikeru

English Translation

I came away here
thinking I might forget it
but wherever one
goes, sorrow turns out to be
a thing that will not let go

Meaning

I came away thinking I might forget. But wherever one goes, sorrow turns out to be a thing that will not let go.

Commentary

59 Sorrow, and Usa

A man who had grown weary of the world and gone down to Tsukushi sent this poem to a woman. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Of the poet the prose tells us only that he had wearied of the world and gone down to Tsukushi; of the woman, nothing at all.
The setting is Tsukushi, that is, Kyushu, where he had gone on leaving the capital.
What prompted the poem was finding that his sorrow had not left him even there.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded.

The first line gives the expectation: that leaving the capital might let him forget.
The concessive that follows announces that it did not.
The word for sorrow is also the name of a place in Tsukushi, so that in saying sorrow will not leave him wherever he goes, he notes that the place he has come to is called Sorrow.
The closing, with an emphatic particle governing its verb, has the tone of a discovery. A hope that changing one's place would change one's mind is disappointed, and the whole of it rests on a single place name.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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