Hitori ni mo aranu omoi wa naki hito mo tabi no sora ni ya kanashikaruran

English Translation

Grief that is not borne
by one alone—the dead as well,
I wonder, are they
in the skies of their journey
feeling sorrow just the same?

Meaning

This grief that belongs to no one alone—do the dead, too, feel it as they travel beneath the skies of their last journey?

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 774

Headnote: "Reply."
This is the second poem of the sequence in which two men exchange the grief of losing a wife, a reply to the preceding poem. It answers that grief is not one person's alone, and wonders whether the dead, too, are sorrowing beneath the skies of their journey. The headnote says "Reply," answering Sanesuke's poem before it.
The son of Fujiwara no Masatada and a grandson of Fujiwara no Kanesuke, the author was an uncle of Murasaki Shikibu. His personal collection, Tameyori shū, survives.
The scene is the time when the author had lost his wife, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is the reply to the poem sent by Sanesuke in the preceding poem.

The first line, "hitori ni mo," takes up "hitotsu naraneba," the last line of the preceding poem, answering by turning "hitotsu," one, into "hitori," one person.
The second line, "aranu omoi wa," means "the grief that is not one person's alone." It directly takes up "omoi" from the preceding poem's fourth line, "tare mo omoi no."
In the third line, "naki hito mo," "mo" adds the sense "not only those left behind but the dead as well." It widens those who share the grief from the living to the dead.
In the fourth line, "tabi no sora ni ya," "tabi no sora" here means the path of the journey to the other world. "Ya" is an interrogative binding particle, completed by "ran" in the last line.
In the last line, "kanashikaruran," "ran" expresses present conjecture and, taking up "ya" in the fourth line, closes as "are they feeling sorrow?" Where the preceding poem sang of the hearts passing between the two survivors, this poem imagines the same sorrow on the side of the dead, so that in the two poems of the exchange the grief of those left behind and those who have gone form a pair.

Author

Fujiwara no Tameyori

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other