Takigikoru kotowakinōni tsukinishio izaonogaewa kokonikutasamu

English Translation

The cutting of wood
came to its end yesterday
and so, let it be —
here the handle of the axe
shall be left behind to rot

Meaning

The gathering of firewood came to its end yesterday — so let the handle of the axe rot away here where we are.

Commentary

308 The Lady Mother of the Lord of Ohara

The lady mother of the lord of Ohara held the Eight Lectures on the Lotus Sutra at a temple called Fumon. People attended, and the following day gathered at the Ono residence for music and the composing of Chinese verse. This poem was made on that occasion.

For the lord of Ohara the text supplies only this appellation, and identifications differ. The word rendered as lord is an honorific for a person of rank, and the phrase for his mother follows it. Fumon is the name of the temple, Ono of the residence.

The time is the day after the Eight Lectures; the place is the Ono residence.

The immediate occasion is that the lectures ended the day before and the company gathered the next day for entertainment.

The text calls the poem splendid and closes with the remark that here, apparently, they speak of gathering firewood.

The opening lines refer to the firewood procession of the Eight Lectures, concluded the previous day. To gather firewood is a phrase drawn from the story in the Lotus Sutra of the Buddha in a former life gathering wood and drawing water in service to a sage; at such a service it stands for that austerity. In the third line a completive and a past attributive are followed by a concessive particle: it is over, and yet.

The fourth line opens with an interjection urging action, and names the axe handle — a term that follows naturally from gathering wood, and that also invokes the story of the man who watched a game of go in the mountains until the handle of his axe had rotted away. The close ends on an auxiliary of intention: let it rot here.

The service being over, there is no more wood to gather; so let the axe handle rot in this place, where time is being forgotten. Religious vocabulary and a party are joined by a single implement, and the end of an austerity turns straight into the beginning of a pleasure so absorbing that the hours go unnoticed.

Among the poems arising from religious occasions, "Motometemo kakaruhachisuno tsuyuooite ukiyonimatawa kaerumonokawa" in the thirty-fourth section refuses to return to the ordinary world because the service is too precious; this one takes the end of a service as licence to step over to the side of pleasure. The same vocabulary is made to run in the opposite direction.

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other