山河の菊の下水いかなれば
流れて人の老いをせくらん
流れて人の老いをせくらん
- Roma-ji
-
Yamakawa no kiku no shitamizu ika nareba nagarete hito no oi o sekuran
- English Translation
-
The mountain river,
the stream beneath chrysanthemums—
why is it, I ask,
that while flowing, for us all
it holds back the coming of age?
- Meaning
- The water flowing beneath the chrysanthemums in the mountain stream—why is it that, even as it flows away, it holds back the coming of old age?
- Commentary
-
Book Seven Felicitation Poems 717
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the first poem of the chrysanthemum sequence. The speaker asks why the water flowing beneath the chrysanthemums in a mountain stream should, while flowing, hold back human aging. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author lived in the early Heian period and served in provincial posts such as Secretary of Sagami, Provisional Senior Secretary of Kōzuke, and Provisional Senior Secretary of Shimōsa. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
The scene is autumn, when chrysanthemums bloom, and the place is a riverside deep in the mountains where chrysanthemums grow.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
Behind the poem lies the Chinese legend of the chrysanthemum water: in Li County of Nanyang Commandery, people who drank from a stream into which dew dripped from chrysanthemums lived to great ages.
The first line, "yamakawa no," means "of the river flowing through the mountains." A deep mountain stream where chrysanthemums grow is presented.
The second line, "kiku no shitamizu," means "the water beneath the chrysanthemums." Drawing on the legend of the chrysanthemum water, it is sung as water that brings long life.
The third line, "ika nareba," is a question meaning "for what reason," answering the conjectural "ran" of the last line.
In the fourth line, "nagarete hito no," "nagarete" means "flowing." The wit lies in something that flows away performing the opposite action to "seku" in the last line.
In the last line, "oi o sekuran," "seku" means to dam a current and forms associated words with "water" and "flowing." Posing the paradox of flowing water damming old age as a question, the poem argues the virtue of the chrysanthemum water through reasoning. The next poem, 718, takes up chrysanthemums of the Long Month, continuing the poems of longevity through chrysanthemums.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Okikaze
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Year after year bamboo springs up, joint on joint, through the passing ages— this color that never changes, whose could I take it to be?
- The pine on the peak that has stood a thousand years— in the autumn wind its voice may change, it is true, but its color changes not.
- Praying all the while for longer still, in the Long Month, chrysanthemum blooms— in which of all the autumns would I not plant them to see?
- The mountain dweller plucks them, fragrant on his sleeve, chrysanthemum dew— even while he brushes it off, a thousand years must pass by.