Yo no naka wa uki fushi shigeshi shinohara ya tabi ni shi areba imo yume ni miyu

English Translation

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.

Meaning

In this world sorrows crowd as thick as the nodes of bamboo grass on the plain; because I am far away on a journey, my wife appears to me in dreams.

Commentary

Book Ten Travel Poems 976

Headnote: "A travel poem among the hundred poems of personal grievance he composed."
This is the third of a sequence of poems of personal reflection on a journey. The world is as thick with sorrows as bamboo grass with nodes, and because he is on a journey, his wife appears in his dreams, laying the griefs of the world over the thoughts of the road. According to the headnote, it is a travel poem among the hundred poems of personal grievance he composed.
The text gives no author. It might seem to continue from Minamoto no Yoritomo in the preceding poem, but the "hundred poems of personal grievance" of the headnote is a sequence Fujiwara no Shunzei composed in his youth, and this poem is by Shunzei. Shunzei, a poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, compiled the Senzai Wakashū and was the father of Fujiwara no Teika.
The scene is a night on a journey, on a road across plains of bamboo grass.
The direct occasion is composing on the travel topic in Fujiwara no Shunzei's hundred poems of personal grievance.

The first line, "yo no naka wa," means "this world." Though a travel poem, it first takes up the sorrows of the world, as a poem of personal grievance.
In the second line, "uki fushi shigeshi," "fushi" carries both "uki fushi," sorrowful matters, and "fushi," the nodes of bamboo grass. "Shigeshi" means many, laying the many nodes of the bamboo over the many sorrows of the world. The poem breaks after this second line.
The third line, "shinohara ya," means "the plain of bamboo grass." The particle "ya" expresses feeling. Set as a word associated with "fushi" in the second line, it turns to the scene of the road. Following "ono no shinohara" in 957, a bamboo-grass plain is sung of again.
The fourth line, "tabi ni shi areba," means "because I am on a journey." "Shi" is an intensive particle. In the same form as "waga mi ni shi areba" in 972, it gives the reason of being on the road.
The last line, "imo yume ni miyu," means "my wife appears in my dreams." As someone from home appears in a traveler's dream in 912, here the one at home appears in a dream. Where 904 laments not meeting the beloved even in dreams, here the wife does appear, joining the line of poems on meeting in dreams.

Author

Fujiwara no Shunzei

Source

Shin Kokin Wakashu

Other