あはれ君いかなる野辺の煙にて
むなしき空の雲となりけん
むなしき空の雲となりけん
- Roma-ji
-
Aware kimi ika naru nobe no keburi nite munashiki sora no kumo to nariken
- English Translation
-
Ah, my lord—
as the smoke of what fields
did you rise,
to become a cloud
in the empty sky?
- Meaning
- Ah, my lord—as the smoke of what fields did you rise, to become a cloud in the empty sky?
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Lament Poems 821
Headnote: "Sent to Gen no Sanmi after Retired Emperor Go-Suzaku passed away."
This is the second poem of the sequence remembering the dead through smoke, and the opening poem of an exchange. It asks, "Ah, my lord," as the smoke of what fields he rose to become a cloud in the empty sky. According to the headnote, it was sent to Gen no Sanmi after Emperor Go-Suzaku died.
The author was a lady-in-waiting and poet of the mid-Heian period. "Go-Suzaku'in" is Emperor Go-Suzaku, son of Emperor Ichijō and Jōtōmon'in. He died in the first month of Kantoku 2 (1045). "Gen no Sanmi" is the name of a lady-in-waiting.
The scene is spring after Emperor Go-Suzaku's death, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is mourning Emperor Go-Suzaku and sending a poem to Gen no Sanmi.
In the first line, "aware kimi," "aware" is an interjection meaning "ah." "Kimi," my lord, refers to the late Emperor Go-Suzaku, and the poem opens with an address.
The second line, "ika naru nobe no," means "of what fields." "Ika naru" is interrogative, completed by the attributive "ken" in the last line.
The third line, "keburi nite," means "as the smoke" of cremation. It takes up "keburi ni narishi" in the preceding poem, 820.
In the fourth line, "munashiki sora no," "munashiki sora" means the empty sky, and it also calls to mind the Buddhist idea of emptiness.
In the last line, "kumo to nariken," "ken" is past conjecture, meaning "did you become a cloud?" In the passage from smoke to cloud she sees the fleetingness of the emperor's death. Like "katami no kumo" in 803 of this book, it shows the view that the smoke of cremation becomes a cloud. The next poem, 822, replies by taking up this smoke with the haze of spring.
- Author
- Ben no Menoto
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Hoping at the least to see the traces of the dead, I came and looked— but it has become instead a village not the same.
- Since that evening when the one I knew so well turned into smoke, how dear to me is the name of the shore of Shiogama.
- Think of me, my friend— not mingling with the smoke that burned away, the haze of spring that rises left behind, lagging still.
- Ah, my friend— had you known your life would end today, by the reeds of Naniwa you would have made no vow.