Arazaran nochi shinobe to ya sode no ka o hanatachibana ni todomeokiken

English Translation

"When I am no more,
remember me"—is that why
the scent of sleeves
to the orange blossoms here
was left behind to linger?

Meaning

Was it saying, "remember me when I am gone," that my child left the scent of those sleeves to linger in the orange blossoms?

Commentary

Book Eight Lament Poems 844

Headnote: "Composed when I went to that house in summer the year after my child died, and the orange blossoms were fragrant."
This is the first poem of the sequence lamenting the deaths of those close. It wonders whether the child left the scent of its sleeves in the orange blossoms, saying "remember me after I am gone." According to the headnote, it was composed in summer the year after his child died, when he went to the house where the child had lived and the orange blossoms were fragrant.
The author was a poet of the late Heian period who served as a priest of the Hie Shrine.
The scene is summer the year after the child's death, set at the house where the late child had lived.
The direct occasion is smelling the fragrance of orange blossoms at the house of his late child.
The foundation poem is an anonymous poem in the Kokin Wakashū, which says that on smelling the orange blossoms that wait for the fifth month, one catches the scent of the sleeves of someone dear from long ago.

The first line, "arazaran," means "when I shall be no more." "Zara" is negative and "n" conjectural, imagining that the late child had thought of the time after its own death.
In the second line, "nochi shinobe to ya," "ya" is an interrogative binding particle, completed by "ken" in the last line. It means "saying, remember me after I am gone?"
The third line, "sode no ka o," takes up "the scent of the sleeves of someone of long ago" from the foundation poem.
The fourth line, "hanatachibana ni," sings of orange blossoms as in the foundation poem, as the flower that recalls the scent of the sleeves of someone from the past.
In the last line, "todomeokiken," "ken" is past conjecture, meaning "must have left it to linger." Where in the foundation poem the fragrance of orange blossoms brings someone of long ago to mind, here the late child is seen as having left the scent of its sleeves in the blossoms on purpose. Through allusion to the foundation poem, the orange blossoms become a keepsake of the child. From the poems of memorial services ending with the preceding poem, 843, the book moves here to a poem on the seasonal things of a dead child's house.

Author

Hafuribe no Narinaka

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other