まだ知らぬ故郷人は今日までに
来んと頼めし我を待つらん
来んと頼めし我を待つらん
- Roma-ji
-
Mada shiranu furusatobito wa kyō made ni kon to tanomeshi ware o matsuran
- English Translation
-
Knowing nothing yet,
the people of my homeland
must, until today,
still await me, who had promised
I would come back by this day.
- Meaning
- Knowing nothing yet, the people back home must still be waiting for me, who promised to return by today.
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 909
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the fifth of a sequence of travel poems by poets of the Heian period. The people at home, still unaware, must be waiting for him who promised to return by today, the thoughts of a traveler unable to go back. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, Sugawara no Sukeaki, lived in the mid-Heian period and was a member of the Sugawara clan.
The scene is the promised day of return, which finds him still on the road, far from home.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "mada shiranu," means "not yet knowing." It shows that those at home do not yet know he cannot return on the promised day.
The second line, "furusatobito wa," means "the people of my home," those left behind by one who has set out.
The third line, "kyō made ni," means "by today." It reveals that the promised day of return is today.
The fourth line, "kon to tanomeshi," means "who made them count on my coming." "Tanomu" here is in its lower bigrade conjugation, meaning to make others rely on one, and the past "shi" looks back to the moment of the promise.
The last line, "ware o matsuran," means "must be waiting for me." "Ran" conjectures about a present event out of sight, picturing those at home waiting even now. Like "machikoinuran" of the pines of home in 898, it imagines from the traveler's side the hearts of those who wait. And where in the preceding poem the author, far from the capital, is the one waiting for word, here the traveler is the one awaited, reversing waiting and being awaited.
- Author
- Sugawara no Sukeaki
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- On the eastern road, at Saya-no-Nakayama, not clearly at all can I see the cloud-veiled distance— shall I end my days out there?
- Should I, after all, hold resentment toward that one? O bird of the capital, for not even "Are you well?" do I ever hear them ask.
- As I cross the plain of Ina, where the long birds fly, over Mount Arima the evening mists have risen, and there is no inn for me.
- Where the divine winds blow, breaking down the beach reeds of Ise to lay them for a bed, is he sleeping on his journey out upon that rough seashore?