別れ路はこれや限りの旅ならむ
さらに行くべき心地こそせね
さらに行くべき心地こそせね
- Roma-ji
-
Wakareji wa kore ya kagiri no tabi naramu sara ni ikubeki kokochi koso sene
- English Translation
-
On the parting road,
is this the journey that will be
the very last of all?
I have no heart at all
to think I could go on further.
- Meaning
- On this road of parting, will this journey be my last? I cannot feel at all that I could go any further.
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 872
Headnote: "Sent to someone when setting out on religious austerities."
This is the second poem of the sequence on partings from those setting out on distant journeys. Leaving for religious practice, the speaker fears this may be his last journey and feels he cannot go on at all. According to the headnote, it was sent to someone when he set out on his austerities.
The author was a son of Fujiwara no Michitsuna, served as intendant of Tennōji, and was known for the beauty of his sutra-chanting voice.
The scene is his departure for religious austerities, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion was the poem he sent to someone as he set out on his austerities.
The first line, "wakareji wa," means "the road of parting." Poems 874 and 894 open with the same first line, so the phrase recurs as a way of beginning a poem of parting.
The second line, "kore ya kagiri no," means "is this the last," the particle "ya" posing a question. It shows the fear that the journey of practice may last as long as his life.
The third line, "tabi naramu," means "will it be the journey," closing in the attributive form of the conjectural "mu" in response to "ya," and the poem breaks here.
In the fourth line, "sara ni ikubeki," "sara ni" pairs with the negative in the last line to mean "not at all." It expresses the forlorn sense that he cannot go any further.
The last line, "kokochi koso sene," closes in "ne," the perfective form of the negative "zu," in response to the particle "koso." Where the preceding poem is a mother seeing off her son, this poem voices the forlornness of the one departing, so the one who sends off and the one who goes are placed side by side.
- Author
- Dōmyō
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Though I think that we will meet again in days to come, after we have parted, when that time is going to be— who is there that ever knows?
- Cathay, too, I hear, lies beneath the selfsame heaven— so they say, and yet the land beneath the shining sun, this land, may you not forget.
- The River of Heaven— than the boat that sailed away and vanished in the sky, more than theirs, it is my grief that is deeper this morning.
- On the parting road never do the sighs of grief cease at any time— yet sadder still than ever is this autumn evening.