君がゆく越のしら山知らずとも
ゆきのまにまにあとはたづねむ
ゆきのまにまにあとはたづねむ
- Roma-ji
-
Kimi ga yuku Koshi no Shirayama shirazu tomo yuki no manimani ato wa tazunemu
- English Translation
-
Though I do not know
Shirayama of Koshi, where
you are going now
I shall follow where the snow
goes, and look for your footprints
- Meaning
- Though I do not know Shirayama in Koshi, where you are bound, I shall follow as the snow goes and look for your footprints.
- Commentary
-
75 The White Mountain of Koshi
The same Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi composed this poem on the night of a farewell for a man of the chamberlains' office who was going down to Kaga as governor. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, one of the thirty-six poetic immortals, who appears through the seventy-first to seventy-fourth sections. Of the man appointed governor the prose tells us only that he served in the chamberlains' office.
The setting is the night of the farewell, with the man bound for Kaga.
What prompted the poem was that farewell.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded. It was later included in the Kokin-shū.
Shirayama in Koshi is the mountain in Kaga province, known for its deep snow, and it stands here for the place the man is going.
Its first syllables are also the first syllables of the verb for knowing, and the poem strikes the same sound twice in a row.
The word for snow in the fourth line is also the word for going, so that letting the snow fall as it will and letting him go as he must are one phrase.
The word in the last line means a footprint, and also news of someone gone. Snow should bury any track, and he says he will look for it all the same. Puns are laid one on another, and what the poem states is the intention to follow.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- There is the parting itself to be grieved over and now, on top of that, a whole day spent waiting is one more thing to grieve for
- For all the trouble of moving it in close by the house, it has come to nothing: this is a tree I do nothing but wait for
- Tonight of all nights a plover that has waded into the river of tears goes crying homeward And you — do you not know it
- Through the long night I keep watch till dawn at Akashi where they burn the salt Does the smoke of it not rise and stand up against the sky