消えかへり岩間に迷ふ水の泡の
しばし宿借る薄氷かな
しばし宿借る薄氷かな
- Roma-ji
-
Kiekaeri iwama ni mayou mizu no awa no shibashi yado karu usugōri kana
- English Translation
-
Vanishing, returning,
wandering among the rocks,
the foam upon the water
finds a lodging for a while
in the thin ice
- Meaning
- The foam on the water, vanishing and forming again as it wanders among the rocks, finds a lodging for a little while in the thin ice.
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 632
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the fourth poem of the ice sequence. It sings of thin ice in which the foam on the water, vanishing and forming again as it wanders among the rocks, finds a lodging for a while. The headnote continues from the preceding poem with no topic given, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "the Regent and Chancellor," is Fujiwara no Yoshitsune. A son of the Regent Kujō Kanezane, he rose to Regent and Chancellor and wrote the Japanese preface to the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is winter, and the place is water flowing among rocks.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "kiekaeri," means "vanishing and forming again and again," showing the fleetingness of the foam.
The second line, "iwama ni mayou," means "wandering among the rocks," taking up the word "iwama" from "iwama ni musebu" in the fourth line of the preceding poem.
The third line, "mizu no awa no," means "of the foam on the water" and runs to six syllables, one over the count. Foam on water has long been sung as a figure for things that do not last.
The fourth line, "shibashi yado karu," means "borrows a lodging for a while." The foam drifting in the current and caught for a time in thin ice is personified as borrowing a lodging.
The last line, "usugōri kana," closes with the exclamatory particle "kana." Fleeting foam borrowing a brief lodging in thin ice, itself fleeting, makes a scene of transience layered on transience. Taking up the mountain stream that freezes and breaks in the preceding poem, the poem narrows its gaze to the thin ice that holds the foam of that current.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The mountain drops that soaked one waiting there have lost their sound; on the lower leaves of the maki they now hang as icicles
- Freezing even as it breaks apart again, the mountain stream— among the rocks it chokes and sobs, its voice in the hour before dawn
- On my pillow, on my sleeves, my tears have frozen into ice, and to the dreams I cannot form the storm wind comes to call
- Upstream at the source, from between the rocks where ice has formed in patches, still left on the Kiyotaki the white waves flow