冬を浅みまたく時雨と思ひしを
絶えざりけりな老の涙も
絶えざりけりな老の涙も
- Roma-ji
-
Fuyu o asami mataku shigure to omoishi o taezarikeri na oi no namida mo
- English Translation
-
Winter being young,
I thought them only showers,
and yet they did not cease—
for they were also
the tears of old age
- Meaning
- Since winter had barely begun, I took it all for the winter showers—yet they never ceased, for the tears of old age were falling too.
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 578
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the ninth poem of the winter-showers sequence. Since winter had barely begun, the speaker took it all for showers, only to realize that the tears of old age had been falling without cease as well. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Kiyohara no Motosuke," is Kiyohara no Motosuke. A grandson of Kiyohara no Fukayabu, he took part in compiling the Gosen Wakashū as one of the Five Men of the Pear Chamber. He was the father of Sei Shōnagon and one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
The scene is the beginning of winter, and no place is specified.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "fuyu o asami," means "since winter is still young," with the pattern "o ... mi" expressing cause or reason.
In the second line, "mataku shigure to," "mataku" means "entirely" or "wholly." Because it was the beginning of winter, the speaker thought that what fell was wholly the showers.
In the third line, "omoishi o," "o" is a concessive conjunctive particle: "though I thought so." "Shi" is the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki."
The fourth line, "taezarikeri na," means "ah, they never ceased," with "keri" expressing the exclamation of awareness and "na" an exclamatory particle. The poem breaks after the fourth line, in inverted relation to the last line.
The last line, "oi no namida mo," means "the tears of old age as well." Through "mo," it shows that the tears of old age, like the showers, do not cease. The device of overlaying showers and tears appears also in 560 and 567 of this book, but this poem adds to it the lament of old age. The next poem, 579, likewise sings of a robe wet with winter showers.
- Author
- Kiyohara no Motosuke
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Winter showers fall, their sound is heard, and yet the black bamboo— why, through all its nodes and years, does its color never change?
- Winter showers' rain could not dye them after all— in Yamashiro, in the Evergreen Grove, the lower leaves of the maki pines
- In a brushwood hut where the gaps let in the sky, sleeping on a journey, wet with winter showers, my robe of the night
- Listen, winter showers— were there no sleeve of mine lost in brooding thought, once the leaves had gone, what would you have left to dye?