Kakitomuru kotonoha nomi zo mizuguki no nagarete tomaru katami narikeru

English Translation

Only the words
written down and left behind—
the brush's stream
flows on and yet remains,
the keepsake, after all.

Meaning

Only the words she wrote down, the brush's stream that flows and yet remains, turn out to be her keepsake.

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 826

Headnote: "When, around the time the woman I had visited passed away, I took out the letters she had left, meaning to make them into paper for copying sutras, and looked at them."
This is the second poem of the sequence on using keepsakes for Buddhist rites. It says that only the words written down are the keepsake that remains, the brush traces flowing and yet staying. According to the headnote, around the time a woman he had visited died, he took out the letters she had left, meaning to make them into paper for copying sutras, and composed this on looking at them.
The son of Provisional Middle Counselor Fujiwara no Michisue, the author rose to Provisional Major Counselor and also held the post of Inspector.
The scene is the time around the woman's death, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is rereading the late woman's letters while meaning to make them into paper for sutras.
Letters of the dead were sometimes repulped into paper on which sutras were copied as an offering for their repose.

The first line, "kakitomuru," means "written down." It refers to the letters the woman left.
In the second line, "kotonoha nomi zo," "kotonoha" means words and "nomi" is restrictive, meaning "only the words." "Zo" is an emphatic binding particle, completed by the attributive "keru" in the last line.
In the third line, "mizuguki no," "mizuguki" is handwriting. Through its "mizu," water, it leads into "nagarete," flowing, in the fourth line.
The fourth line, "nagarete tomaru," means "flowing and yet remaining," as water might. It says that the flowing brush traces remain on the paper, setting "nagare," flow, against "tomaru," remain.
In the last line, "katami narikeru," "keru" is exclamatory, meaning "it was the keepsake after all." Though the person has flowed away, only the words she wrote remain as a keepsake. It is a scene in which he is about to give up that keepsake as paper for sutras, and like the mirror in the preceding poem, 825, two poems of using keepsakes for Buddhist rites stand together. In treating handwriting as a keepsake, it echoes the "mizuguki" poems 806 and 807 of this book and the "kakitomeshi ato" of 817.

Author

Fujiwara no Kinmichi

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other