置き添ふる露とともには消えもせで
涙にのみもうき沈むかな
涙にのみもうき沈むかな
- Roma-ji
-
Okisouru tsuyu to tomo ni wa kie mo sede namida ni nomi mo ukishizumu kana
- English Translation
-
With the settling dew
that is added, I do not
vanish as it does,
but only in my tears
float and sink in misery.
- Meaning
- I do not vanish together with the dew that settles upon my sleeves; instead I only float and sink in my tears, in sorrow.
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Lament Poems 781
Headnote: "Reply."
This is the seventh poem of the sequence remembering the dead through the things of autumn, a reply to the preceding poem. It answers that the speaker does not vanish together with the added dew, but only floats and sinks in tears. The headnote says "Reply," answering Daini no Sanmi's poem before it.
The author is given as "Anonymous," and no name is recorded. From the headnote of the preceding poem, it is clear that this is the person whose young child had died.
The scene is the same autumn as the preceding poem, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is the reply to the poem sent by Daini no Sanmi in the preceding poem.
The first line, "okisouru," takes up "oki ya souran" from the fourth line of the preceding poem. It answers by taking the very words of the question.
The second line, "tsuyu to tomo ni wa," takes up "aki no yūtsuyu," the last line of the preceding poem. "Wa" singles out, meaning "together with the dew, at least."
In the third line, "kie mo sede," "de" is a negative connective, meaning "without even vanishing." The dew vanishes, yet the speaker does not, and lives on.
The fourth line, "namida ni nomi mo," means "only in tears."
In the last line, "ukishizumu kana," "uki" is a pivot word meaning both "float" and "sorrowful." To floating and sinking in tears is added the sense of sinking in misery. "Kana" is exclamatory. Where the preceding poem said that dew is added to the tears on the sleeves, this poem replies that the speaker neither vanishes with the dew nor escapes, but floats and sinks in tears, making the tears deep enough to sink the whole self.
- Author
- Unknown Poet
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- In the lodging of dew that the autumn wind scatters I leave you behind, and going forth from the dust— that is what brings me sorrow.
- The sleeves of parting, wet with its lingering grief, have not yet dried— does it settle on them too, the dew of the autumn evening?
- Maidenflowers— though I look, my heart finds no comfort there, and all the more I long for the autumns of the past.
- As I lie awake, the sound of the wind that blows right through my body— in the past, far from my sleeves, I must have heard it unmoved.