Mukashi omou niwa ni ukigi o tsumiokite mishi yo ni mo ninu toshi no kure kana

English Translation

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

Meaning

In the garden that brings back the past, I stack up driftwood, sorrow's wood—how unlike the year's ends of the world I once knew this one is!

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 697

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the seventh poem of the year's-end sequence. The year's end greeted with driftwood stacked in a garden that recalls the past is utterly unlike those of the world the speaker once knew. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Saigyō Hōshi," is Saigyō. His lay name was Satō Norikiyo, and he served Retired Emperor Toba as a warrior of the Northern Guard, but took holy orders at twenty-three, traveled through the provinces, and left the poetry collection Sankashū.
The scene is the end of the year, and the place is the garden of the author's dwelling.
The direct occasion is not recorded.

The first line, "mukashi omou," means "that brings the past to mind" and modifies "niwa," garden, in the second line. It runs to six syllables, one over the count.
In the second line, "niwa ni ukigi o," "ukigi" means wood floating on water, driftwood, here referring to firewood laid in for the year's end. "Uki" carries both "floating" and "sorrowful."
The third line, "tsumiokite," means "stacking and setting aside."
The fourth line, "mishi yo ni mo ninu," means "unlike the world I once saw," with "shi" as the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki."
The last line, "toshi no kure kana," closes with the exclamatory particle "kana." The poem sings of the feeling that a year's end greeted in a garden that recalls the past, with wood suggestive of sorrow stacked in it, is wholly different from the year's ends of the brilliant world before taking holy orders. Following the preceding poem's year's end at the height of old age, it sings of the year's end of one who has renounced the world, showing the distance from a past world.

Author

Saigyō

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other