むかしより思ふ心はありそ海の
浜のまさごは数も知られず
浜のまさごは数も知られず
- Roma-ji
-
Mukashi yori omou kokoro wa arisoumi no hama no masago wa kazu mo shirarezu
- English Translation
-
Since long ago this
heart of mine has been — and how
many the grains of
sand on the rough shore's beaches
no one has ever counted
- Meaning
- Since long ago this heart of mine has been what it is; and the grains of sand on that rough shore have never been counted.
- Commentary
-
118 The Sands of the Shore
A woman known as the Elder Lady of Kan'in composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
She takes her name from that residence. The same woman appears in the hundred and nineteenth section, exchanging poems with Fujiwara no Saneki, once Governor of Michinoku.
Neither time nor place is given, nor is the recipient named.
The prose records nothing of what prompted it. It is a short section, a single poem and nothing more.
It ends there; no response and no later event is recorded. The poem was later included in the Shokukokin-shū.
The opening puts the age of the feeling first: since long ago it has been there.
The name of the rough shore begins with the verb for being, so that her heart's existing and the shore itself are one word.
The sands of the beach are the standing figure for what cannot be counted.
The closing says their number is not known, in the spontaneous voice: however one tries, they cannot be counted. The depth of feeling is measured in grains of sand, and from the verb in the third line to the sands in the fourth the poem is one continuous seascape.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- How long I trusted it, this world — how long I went on trusting, and with a body such as this, one the tears kept falling upon
- The dew lies so thick that I pillow my head on sleeves grown grass-like — and like the pine cricket that waits for you, I do nothing but cry
- With this life of mine that I have barely managed to hold on to, would you put an end to even our meeting, on top of that
- Without so much as saying, come, let us go to- gether — why did you mean to cross that mountain of the dead, and cross it alone