行く末にあふくま川のなかりせば
いかにかせまし今日の別れを
いかにかせまし今日の別れを
- Roma-ji
-
Yukusue ni abukumagawa no nakariseba ika ni ka semashi kyō no wakare o
- English Translation
-
If along my way
Abukuma, River of Meeting,
were not flowing there,
what then could I ever do
with this parting of today?
- Meaning
- If the Abukuma, whose name speaks of meeting, did not lie ahead on my way, how could I bear this parting today?
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 866
Headnote: "Sent to Norinaga Ason when I went down as vice-governor of Mutsu."
This is the second poem of the sequence on partings connected with Mutsu and the first of an exchange with Fujiwara no Norinaga. Only because the Abukuma River, whose name holds "meeting," lies at his post can the speaker bear today's parting. According to the headnote, it was sent to Norinaga when the author went down to Mutsu as vice-governor.
The author was an official of the mid-Heian period who served as vice-governor of Mutsu.
The scene is the departure for a post in Mutsu, and the place is the capital.
The direct occasion was his parting from Norinaga on going down as vice-governor of Mutsu.
The Abukuma is a poetic river of Mutsu, flowing from present-day Fukushima Prefecture through Miyagi Prefecture into the Pacific, and it was sung with a play on "au," "to meet," in poems wishing for reunion.
The first line, "yukusue ni," means "on the way ahead," pointing both to the post in Mutsu and to the time still to come.
The second line, "abukumagawa no," plays on the Abukuma River of Mutsu and "au," "to meet." The speaker finds hope of reunion in the name of the place where he is posted.
The third line, "nakariseba," means "if it were not," pairing with "mashi" in the fourth line to form a counterfactual. It is the same word as the third line of 862, and the idea of entrusting reunion to a place whose name means meeting is also shared.
The fourth line, "ika ni ka semashi," means "what should I do," the question raised by the particle "ka" closing in the attributive "mashi." The poem breaks here, and the object is placed afterward in the last line by inversion.
The last line, "kyō no wakare o," sets the object of the fourth line at the end by inversion, fixing attention on today as the moment of parting.
- Author
- Takashina no Tsuneshige
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Is this, then, the one at the far edge of the clouds woven, so I hear— a robe that knows no cutting, the feathered robe of heaven?
- Robe River's waters— parting from one long familiar, steeped as in its stream, even to my sleeve's deep folds the waves have risen up.
- To meet you once again, by the River of Meeting I must wait— and yet, with so little left to me of all my years, it is I who am sorrowful.
- Though in coolness far the pines of Iki no Matsubara may surpass it there, the breeze of this fan I send— do not let it slip your mind.