Sue no tsuyu moto no shizuku ya yo no naka no okure sakidatsu tameshi naruran

English Translation

Dew on the leaf tips,
droplets falling at the roots—
are these, in this world,
the pattern of those left behind
and those who go on before?

Meaning

The dew on the tips of the leaves and the drops at the roots vanish, some sooner and some later. Are they, I wonder, the very example of how in this world some are left behind while others go on before?

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 757

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the first poem of the sequence on impermanence and the opening poem of Book Eight, Lament Poems. It sees the dew on the leaf tips and the drops at the roots as an example of how some people are left behind while others die first. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author's lay name was Yoshimine no Munesada, and he was a grandson of Emperor Kanmu. He served Emperor Ninmyō as Head Chamberlain, took holy orders upon the emperor's death, and later rose to the rank of archbishop. He is one of the Six Poetic Immortals and one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
The scene is a contemplation of impermanence at no fixed season, set among plants and trees where dew has settled.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The poem appears in his personal collection, the Henjōshū, and is also included under "Impermanence" in the Wakan rōeishū. The kana preface of the Shin Kokin Wakashū itself alludes to it, speaking of comparing human life to "the dew on the tips and the drops at the roots."

The first line, "sue no tsuyu," is the dew resting on the tips of the leaves. Dew has long been sung as the emblem of things that fade in an instant.
In the second line, "moto no shizuku ya," "moto no shizuku" is the drop falling at the roots. "Sue" (tip) and "moto" (root) form a pair, setting side by side two things that vanish sooner or later. "Ya" is an interrogative binding particle, completed by "ran" in the last line.
With the third line, "yo no naka no," the eye moves from plants and trees to the human world. From here the natural image of the first two lines becomes a figure for human life and death.
The fourth line, "okure sakidatsu," means being left behind when another dies, and dying before another. The earlier and later vanishing of dew and drops is laid over the order in which people die.
In the last line, "tameshi naruran," "tameshi" means an example and "ran" expresses conjecture; taking up "ya" in the second line, it closes as "might they be the example?" The poem finds, in the small difference of timing within a single plant, the order of death among all people, and so sets out at the head of the book the principle of parting itself, before the poems mourning particular deaths. The next poem, 758, is also of unknown topic, and takes the death of people seen broadly here as the end of one's own single life.

Author

Henjō

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other