見てだにも飽かぬ心を玉鉾の
みちのおくまで人の行くらむ
みちのおくまで人の行くらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Mite dani mo akanu kokoro o tamahoko no michi no oku made hito no yukuramu
- English Translation
-
Even while I see you,
my heart can never have its fill—
yet down the jeweled road
to the far end of the way,
why must you go so far?
- Meaning
- Even with you before my eyes, my heart can never see enough of you. Why, then, must you go down the long road to Michinoku, the farthest reach of the way?
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 861
Headnote: "To someone going down to the province of Mutsu."
This is the fifth poem of the sequence seeing off people bound for distant provinces. Though the speaker cannot see enough of the person even when near, that person is going all the way to Mutsu at the end of the road. According to the headnote, it was sent to someone going down to Mutsu.
The author was a poet of the early Heian period, one of the compilers of the Kokinshū and the writer of the Tosa Diary.
The scene is the parting from someone leaving for Mutsu, and the place is the capital.
The direct occasion was the parting from a person going down to Mutsu.
The first line, "mite dani mo," means "even while seeing," the particle "dani" naming a lesser case to suggest a greater one. It sets forth first a longing unsatisfied even in the other's presence.
The second line, "akanu kokoro o," means "though my heart is never sated," with "o" working as a concessive. It carries the thought of how much worse it will be once the two are far apart.
The third line, "tamahoko no," is a pillow word modifying "road." It is the same pillow word as the first line of 857, so two poems seeing off people bound for Mutsu are joined by the same word.
The fourth line, "michi no oku made," means "to the depths of the road," with a play on the province of Michinoku. Mutsu bears in its very name the meaning "the far end of the road," showing that it is the land most distant from the capital.
The last line, "hito no yukuramu," means "why does that person go," the auxiliary "ramu," conjecturing a cause, voicing the lament of why one must go so far. Unlike the earlier poems that entrust feeling to robes or letters, here the distance of the destination itself becomes the object of grief.
- Author
- Ki no Tsurayuki
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- To the wings of geese flying northward far away, entrust your letters— superscriptions on the clouds, written on and never ceasing.
- In the autumn mist a travel robe was cut for you— keep it near and look, though it be a keepsake slight, no more than a drop of dew.
- If at Ōsaka, the Barrier of Meeting, my house had never stood, those who part from us would not place their trust in meeting again.
- Wear it till it's yours, so I thought, and cut for you this travel robe—yet the day you left I never knew, and so it has come to be.