Isogarenu toshi no kure koso aware nare mukashi wa yoso ni kikishi haru ka wa

English Translation

How moving it is,
this year's end I cannot hurry
to make ready for—
did I in days gone by
hear of spring as others' news?

Meaning

How deeply moving is this year's end, when I feel no urge to hurry and prepare—in the old days, did I ever hear of the coming spring as if it had nothing to do with me?

Commentary

Book Six Winter Poems 701

Headnote: "When I presented a hundred-poem sequence."
This is the eleventh poem of the year's-end sequence. Now in old age, the speaker is moved by a year's end when he feels no urge to hurry and prepare for the new spring, and reflects that in the past he never heard of spring's coming as something that had nothing to do with him. According to the headnote, it was composed when a hundred-poem sequence was presented.
The author, "the Lay Monk Minister of the Left," is Sanjō Sanefusa. A son of the Palace Minister Fujiwara no Kiminori, he rose to Minister of the Left and later took holy orders.
The scene is the end of the year, 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, "isogarenu," means "for which I feel no urge to hurry," with "re" as the irrealis form of the spontaneous auxiliary "ru" and "nu" as the attributive form of the negative auxiliary "zu." It presupposes that the year's end is properly a time of hurrying to prepare for the new year.
In the second line, "toshi no kure koso," "koso" is a binding particle corresponding to the perfective "nare" in the third line.
The third line, "aware nare," means "is deeply moving," a kakari-musubi construction in which "koso" is answered by the perfective form. The poem breaks after the third line.
The fourth line, "mukashi wa yoso ni," means "in the old days, as others' affairs."
The last line, "kikishi haru ka wa," means "was spring something I heard of so? Surely not," with "shi" as the attributive form of the past auxiliary "ki" and "ka wa" rhetorical. The poem sings of the difference between the heart of then and now: in youth one looked forward eagerly to the coming spring, but in old age the heart is not even stirred to prepare for it. Where the preceding poem found the year's end in a monk's daily practice, this poem finds the sorrow of the year's end in the fading of the heart that waits for spring, and it also answers 694 in this book, which turned its eyes to the coming year.

Author

Sanjō Sanefusa

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other