Tsui ni yuku michi to wa kanete kikishikado kinō kyō to wa omowazarishi o

English Translation

That this is the road
we all go in the end, I
had heard long before —
but that it should be yesterday
or today, I never thought

Meaning

I had long heard that this is the road we all go in the end. But that it should be yesterday or today, I never thought.

Commentary

165 The Road We All Go

In the reign of the Mizunoo Emperor there was a daughter of the Senior Controller of the Left, known as the Lady of Ben; and after the emperor had taken holy orders and she was living alone, Captain Ariwara used to visit her in secret. He fell ill and grew very bad; but since he had wives of his own and the affair was closely hidden, she could not go openly to see him, and her visits were made in secret, day after day. Then came a day when she did not go. His illness had grown grave, and that was the day. From him came "Tsurezure to itodo kokoro no wabishiki ni kyō wa towazute kurashitemu to ya". Hearing how weak he had grown, she wept and cried out, and while she was composing an answer to send, word came that he was dead, and her grief was terrible. At the very point of dying he had composed "Tsui ni yuku michi to wa kanete kikishikado kinō kyō to wa omowazarishi o", and with that he breathed his last. That is the whole of the section.
The Mizunoo Emperor is Emperor Seiwa. The Senior Controller of the Left headed one of the controllers' offices of the Council of State, and the Lady of Ben was his daughter. Captain Ariwara is Ariwara no Narihira, who appears in the hundred and sixty-first through hundred and sixty-third sections. The second poem of this section appears also in the hundred and twenty-fifth section of the Tales of Ise.
The setting is his deathbed, at the very point of dying.
What prompted the poem was his death itself. With it he breathed his last, the prose says.
The section closes with it. Where the earlier poem asked for a visit, this one is addressed to no one. It appears also in the hundred and twenty-fifth section of the Tales of Ise, and was included in the Kokin-shū.

The road we all go in the end is the road out of life.
He had heard of it long before, and the concessive turns on that: and yet. The general truth that everyone dies is set down first.
What follows means yesterday or today — that is, immediately, now.
The closing breaks off on a particle of regret: he never thought it. All the poem says is that what he knew as a fact he did not expect to happen to him. No lament and no grievance; only the distance between knowing and the thing itself. It is among the best known poems in the book.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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