また越えん人も止まらばあはれ知れ
我が折り敷ける峰の椎柴
我が折り敷ける峰の椎柴
- Roma-ji
-
Mata koen hito mo tomaraba aware shire waga orishikeru mine no shiibashi
- English Translation
-
Whoever again
crosses here and stops the night,
know how moving it is:
on the peak I broke and spread
these oak twigs for my bed.
- Meaning
- Whoever crosses this peak after me and stops here for the night, know the pathos of it: these oak twigs on the peak are the ones I broke and spread for my bed.
- Commentary
-
Book Ten Travel Poems 974
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the first of a sequence of poems of personal reflection on a journey. The speaker asks any later traveler who stops on this peak to feel the pathos of the oak twigs he broke and spread for his bed, entrusting his feelings to the traces of his night on the road. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, Gaen, was a monk of Kōfukuji in the early Kamakura period who rose to Archbishop.
The scene is after a night of sleeping on the road on a peak, on a peak thick with oak brush.
The direct occasion is not recorded.
The first line, "mata koen," means "who will cross again." It thinks of travelers who will cross the same peak after him.
The second line, "hito mo tomaraba," means "if that person too should stop here." The irrealis form with "ba" makes a supposition.
The third line, "aware shire," means "know the pathos of it." Closing in the imperative, the poem breaks after this third line. As 917 leaves words for a lost companion, this poem calls out to one who will come later.
The fourth line, "waga orishikeru," means "which I broke and spread." Like "nami ni orishiku" in 943, it sings of a traveler's bed of broken branches.
The last line, "mine no shiibashi," means "the oak twigs on the peak," naming what is addressed with a noun ending. It closes by entrusting to the twigs of his bed his feelings for the next traveler. After the preceding poems of journeys by the sea, the poem moves here to a journey over a mountain peak, and poems of reflection on the road follow.
- Author
- Gaen
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Other
-
- Since I am one who wanders without a home, at Kisakata, in the rush huts of the fisherfolk, many a journey's night I've slept.
- With the Naniwa folk, in a hut where reed fires burn I borrowed lodging, and for no reason at all my sleeves are drenched with brine.
- All along the way I could not make out the smoke rising from Mount Fuji, for the sky gave not a moment of clearing all the while.
- In this world of ours the sorrows grow thick as nodes on the bamboo plain; because I am on a journey, my wife appears in my dreams.