思ひやれ八十路の年の暮なれば
いかばかりかはものは悲しき
いかばかりかはものは悲しき
- Roma-ji
-
Omoiyare yasoji no toshi no kure nareba ikabakari ka wa mono wa kanashiki
- English Translation
-
Just imagine it—
since this is the year's end
of my eightieth year,
how very much, how deeply
all things fill me with sorrow
- Meaning
- Only imagine: this is the end of the year in which I have reached eighty—how deeply everything fills me with sorrow!
- Commentary
-
Book Six Winter Poems 696
Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the sixth poem of the year's-end sequence. The speaker asks the reader to imagine how sorrowful the end of the year is when she has reached eighty. According to the headnote, it was composed when a hundred-poem sequence was presented.
The author, "Kojijū," is Kojijū. A daughter of Ki no Mitsukiyo, Superintendent of the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine, she served at court as a lady-in-waiting and was called "Kojijū of the Waiting Night."
The scene is the end of the year in which the author reached eighty, and no place is specified.
The direct occasion is the presentation of a hundred-poem sequence. The headnote does not record for which gathering the hundred poems were composed.
The first line, "omoiyare," means "imagine it," an imperative calling out to the reader. The poem breaks after the first line.
The second line, "yasoji no toshi no," means "of my eightieth year."
The third line, "kure nareba," means "since it is the end," with "ba" attached to the perfective form expressing an established condition. It overlays the end of the year with the end of a life.
The fourth line, "ikabakari ka wa," means "how very much," with "ka wa" expressing a strong question.
The last line, "mono wa kanashiki," means "how sorrowful all things are," closing on the attributive form of the adjective "kanashi." The end of a year met at the great age of eighty is both the close of a year and a reminder that life's end is near, and the poem frankly appeals to the other to imagine the depth of that sorrow. Following the preceding poem's year-end lament for a dewdrop life, it sings of the year's end at the very height of old age. Like "mono zo kanashiki" in 552 and 564 of this book, it closes on the word "kanashiki."
- Author
- Kojiju
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Will the coming year seek me out and find its way to where I dwell, trusting the road to the steed that races past the gap?
- Grieving all the while, this year too has reached its end— a life as brief as dew, with only this, that I still live, to keep as its remembrance
- In the garden where I think of the past, I stack the drift and sorrow wood— a year's end that resembles nothing in the world I knew
- At Isonokami, the bamboo grass of Furu moor has weathered the frost, and now for one night, one joint more, the year alone remains