見し夢にやがてまぎれぬ我が身こそ
問はるる今日もまづ悲しけれ
問はるる今日もまづ悲しけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Mishi yume ni yagate magirenu waga mi koso towaruru kyō mo mazu kanashikere
- English Translation
-
In the dream I saw,
not lost at once with it—
this self of mine
today, receiving your words,
is what first brings me sorrow.
- Meaning
- It is this self of mine, which was not lost together with the dream I saw, that grieves me first of all, even today as I receive your condolences.
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Lament Poems 829
Headnote: "Reply."
This is the third poem of the sequence on visits of mourning and condolence, a reply to the preceding poem. It answers that it is his own self, which was not lost together with the dream he saw, that grieves him first of all even on this day of receiving condolences. The headnote says "Reply," answering Shunzei's poem before it.
The son of Kujō Kanezane, the author rose to Regent and Grand Minister and wrote the kana preface to the Shin Kokin Wakashū.
The scene is the same autumn of the year his wife died as the preceding poem, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is the reply to the poem sent by Shunzei in the preceding poem.
The first line, "mishi yume ni," takes up "yume no uchi" from the preceding poem, meaning "in the dream I saw," the dream of his wife's death.
In the second line, "yagate magirenu," "yagate" means "just as it was." "Magiru" means to be lost from sight, and "nu" is the attributive form of the negative "zu," meaning "not lost together with the dream."
In the third line, "waga mi koso," "koso" is an emphatic binding particle, completed by "kere" in the realis form in the last line. It singles out his own self, which survived without vanishing with his wife.
In the fourth line, "towaruru kyō mo," "towaruru" means to receive condolences, with "ruru" passive. It refers to the day on which he has received the preceding poem's condolences.
In the last line, "mazu kanashikere," "mazu" means "first of all." Where the preceding poem did not wish to startle one within a dream, this reply says that it is he himself, awake from the dream and still alive, who is to be grieved over. Taking up "yume no uchi" and "odorokasaji" from the preceding poem, it shows the sorrow of a self that remained, not lost in the dream.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Yoshitsune
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The Arisu River— the same stream flows unchanged, and yet the image of long ago that I saw I never can forget.
- While you remain in the dream of your sorrow, boundless as it is, I would not wake you, I thought, and have grieved all this while.
- This world of ours— what I have seen and heard is all so fleeting, nothing but the smoke in the empty sky, I find.
- When to lament, when to think upon it, then, if not now, that people pass their days without a thought of the world that is to come?