昨日見し人はいかにと驚けど
なほ長き夜の夢にぞありける
なほ長き夜の夢にぞありける
- Roma-ji
-
Kinō mishi hito wa ika ni to odorokedo nao nagaki yo no yume ni zo arikeru
- English Translation
-
"The one I saw
only yesterday—what now?"
I wake with a start,
yet still I find myself
in the dream of the long night.
- Meaning
- "What has become of the one I saw only yesterday?" I wake with a start—yet still I am within the dream of the long night.
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Lament Poems 833
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "On the heart of impermanence."
This is the third poem of the sequence on the heart of impermanence. It says that he is startled awake, asking what has become of the one seen yesterday, yet he is still within the dream of the long night. The headnote continues from the preceding poem, a composition on "the heart of impermanence."
No author's name is given for this poem in the text, and it follows the author of the preceding poem. The author was the son of Chancellor Fujiwara no Tadamichi and served four times as head of the Tendai school.
The scene and place are not recorded.
The direct occasion is composing on the topic "the heart of impermanence."
The first line, "kinō mishi," means "whom I saw yesterday." "Shi" marks the past, referring to someone who was well until only yesterday.
In the second line, "hito wa ika ni to," "ika ni" means "what has become of." It speaks of the shock that the person of yesterday is gone today.
In the third line, "odorokedo," "odoroku" carries both the sense of being startled into awareness and of waking from sleep. "Do" is concessive, meaning "though I am startled awake."
In the fourth line, "nao nagaki yo no," "nagaki yo," the long night, lays over the long nights of autumn and winter the Buddhist figure of the world of delusion as a long night.
In the last line, "yume ni zo arikeru," "zo" is an emphatic binding particle, completed by the attributive "keru." Even when he thinks he has been startled awake by a death, he has not yet woken from the dream of delusion. Following the preceding poem, 832, which sang of people who do not know the law of death, this poem sings of people, himself included, who are startled yet still unawakened. The next poem, 834, belongs to the same sequence.
- Author
- Jien
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- 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?
- All people alike wear a knowing look, and yet they do not know— that for all there is the law that we must surely die.
- On the weedy moor when will it come to settle, this dewdrop self? The dusk of this very day, or tomorrow's break of dawn?
- I too—when shall I? "If only they were living," those I knew so well, when I try to remember them, how their number keeps on growing.