別れにし人はまたもやみわの山
すぎにし方を今になさばや
すぎにし方を今になさばや
- Roma-ji
-
Wakarenishi hito wa mata mo ya miwa no yama suginishi kata o ima ni nasabaya
- English Translation
-
The one I parted from—
shall I ever see again,
as Mount Miwa asks?
Oh, to make the days long past
into the present once more.
- Meaning
- Shall I ever see again the one I parted from? How I long to make the days that have passed into the present once more.
- Commentary
-
Book Nine Parting Poems 890
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the second poem of the sequence of partings composed on no set topic. Asking whether he will ever see again the one he parted from, the poet longs to bring the vanished past into the present. The original text gives no headnote, so it carries over the topic of the preceding poem.
The author was born into a family of priests of the Hiyoshi Shrine and is known as a poet of the late Heian period.
The scene is a looking back on someone from whom he has parted, and the place is not recorded.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The last line draws on episode thirty-two of the Tales of Ise, which wishes for a way to make the past into the present. Mount Miwa is also known from the Kokinshū poem about a hut at the foot of Miwa with cedars at its gate, and it has long been sung as a mountain that invites a visit.
The first line, "wakarenishi," means "from whom I have parted." In singing a parting already past, it differs from the other poems of this book, which sing the moment of departure.
The second line, "hito wa mata mo ya," means "that person, once again," the particle "ya" posing a question.
The third line, "miwa no yama," is Mount Miwa in Yamato, playing on "mi," "to see," and so leading to the sense of seeing, that is meeting, once more. The name of the mountain serves to join the second and fourth lines.
In the fourth line, "suginishi kata o," "sugi" plays on passing away and on the cedars for which Mount Miwa is famed. Drawing the cedar from Miwa, the poem continues by its sound into "passed."
The last line, "ima ni nasabaya," means "would that I could make it now," the particle "baya" expressing a wish. Where the preceding poem sings the tears of a parting in the present, this poem looks back on a parting long past and seeks the old days, so within the same untitled sequence the direction of time is reversed.
- Author
- Hafuribe no Narinaka
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- I would name the time when I shall come back again, and promise it so— yet this body, grown so old, is a thing I cannot fix.
- Only a brief parting, a parting for a journey, so I bear it—yet old age cannot hold them back, cannot hold back even tears.
- Do not forget it— though the sleeves in which it lodges are henceforth apart, this light of the midnight moon we wring from our sleeves as one.
- Sleeves that grieve to part have told me already now, before it has come, of the dew that lies ahead on the road of your journey.