classic waka stream

この世にはかくてもやみぬわかれ路の
淵瀬をたれに問ひてわたらむ
Roma-ji

Kono yo ni wa kakute mo yaminu wakareji no fuchise o tare ni toite wataramu

English Translation
In this world it has
ended, ended just like this
and the deeps and shoals
of the parting road — whom shall
I ask, to get me across
Meaning
In this world it has ended just like this. And the deeps and shallows of the parting road — whom shall I ask, to get across?
Commentary
111 The Deeps and Shallows of the Parting Road

The daughters of Tachibana no Kinhira, head of the Palace Table Office, lived at the place called Agata no Ido. The eldest served the empress under the name of the Lady Shōshō. The third was the one whom Minamoto no Saneakira, now Governor of Bingo, had taken as his first love in his youth. When their affair came to an end and he stopped coming, she composed this poem and sent it to him. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
Tachibana no Kinhira headed the Palace Table Office, and his daughters lived at the place called Agata no Ido. The eldest served the empress under the name of the Lady Shōshō. The third was the first love of Minamoto no Saneakira in his youth, and her poems appear in the hundred and eleventh through hundred and thirteenth sections and in the hundred and sixteenth. Minamoto no Saneakira served as Governor of Bingo.
Neither time nor place is given. All we are told is that the affair ended and his visits ceased.
What prompted the poem was that ceasing. It was sent to Saneakira.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded. In the hundred and sixteenth section a woman taken to be this same third daughter composes a poem as she is dying, and it answers to this one.

The opening says that in this world it has ended so; naming this world makes room for the next.
The parting road is the road the dead take. Having stated that things are over here, she moves the poem to what comes after.
The deeps and shallows are the deep and shallow places of a river; the tenth section uses the phrase for the turning of the world. Here it is the river of the dead.
The closing asks whom she is to ask in order to cross. Behind it lies the belief that the dead are led across that river by the hand of their first love. He was that person, and now he will not be there. It is a poem of parting, and what it takes up is not this parting but a crossing after death.
Source
Yamato Monogatari
Other