はるばると君が分くべき白波を
あやしやとまる袖にかけつる
あやしやとまる袖にかけつる
- Roma-ji
-
Harubaru to kimi ga wakubeki shiranami o ayashi ya tomaru sode ni kaketsuru
- English Translation
-
Far and far away
the white waves you must part
on your journey out—
how strange that they should break
on my sleeves, who stay behind.
- Meaning
- How strange that the white waves you must cut through on your long journey have broken instead upon the sleeves of one who stays behind.
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 884
Headnote: "When the monk Tōren went down to Tsukushi."
This is the second poem of the sequence on partings by sea. The white waves that the traveler must part are said to have broken on the sleeves of the one who remains. According to the headnote, it was composed when the monk Tōren went down to Tsukushi.
The author was a son of Minamoto no Toshiyori, became a monk of Tōdaiji, and gathered poets at his residence, the Karin'en.
The scene is the sending off of someone bound for Tsukushi, and the place is the capital.
The direct occasion was the monk Tōren's journey down to Tsukushi.
The first line, "harubaru to," expresses great distance. The long sea road to Tsukushi is given in a single word.
The second line, "kimi ga wakubeki," means "which you must part." "Waku" is to push through the waves and go forward, marking the action of the one who travels.
The third line, "shiranami o," is the waves of the sea the ship must cross. Waves that belong to the traveler are shifted in the lower lines to the one left behind.
The fourth line, "ayashi ya," means "how strange," expressing wonder, and the poem breaks here. It marks the surprise of waves breaking where no wave should reach.
The last line, "tomaru sode ni kaketsuru," means "they have broken on the sleeves of one who stays," which in fact refers to sleeves wet with tears. The traveler's waves and the tears of the one remaining are joined in a single word for waves, and the positions of the one who goes and the one who stays are reversed. The poem sends off Tōren, the author of 882, so it follows the sequence on the theme of parting through a link between persons.
- Author
- Shun'e
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- The time I'll return— might I then have promised it to the one I leave, if I were a man who would surely be remembered dearly?
- Though I cannot say who they are, the parting's grief— it is the sorrow of the boatmen heading out past Matsura to the open sea.
- Once you have gone away, saying I await the moon I shall gaze afar toward the eastern quarter, at the sky of evening.
- I will give my word, that your heart may find some ease in the promise made, though the time of my return is a time I cannot name.