霜の上に跡踏みつくる浜千鳥
行方もなしと音をのみぞ泣く
行方もなしと音をのみぞ泣く
- Roma-ji
-
Shimo no ue ni ato fumitsukuru hamachidori yukue mo nashi to ne o nomi zo naku
- English Translation
-
On the frost it treads,
leaving tracks behind, the plover
of the shore:
"there's no place for me to go,"
it cries, and so I only weep
- Meaning
- Like the plover of the shore that leaves its tracks upon the frost and cries that it has nowhere to go, I can only weep aloud, my love leading nowhere.
- Commentary
-
Book Eleven Love Poems I 1024
Headnote: "Topic unknown."
This is the third poem of the sequence on love that seeks the faintest sign. As the shore plover leaves its tracks on the frost and cries with nowhere to go, so the speaker weeps with no way forward in love. The headnote gives no topic, and the circumstances of composition are not recorded.
The author, "Okikaze," was a son of Fujiwara no Michinari, Secretary of Sagami. A poet of the early Heian period, he is counted among the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals and was also skilled on the koto.
The first line, "shimo no ue ni," means "upon the frost fallen on the shore," setting a chill winter scene.
The second line, "ato fumitsukuru," means "treading tracks as it goes." Plovers' tracks were likened to handwriting, echoing "ato o dani" in the preceding poem.
The third line, "hamachidori," names the plovers that flock and cry on winter shores; the first three lines lead to the lower verse through the crying bird.
The fourth line, "yukue mo nashi to," means "that there is nowhere to go," laying over the plover a love whose future cannot be seen.
In the last line, the emphatic "zo" is resolved by "naku." It shares its last line with 1009, the poem by Fukayabu. Where the preceding poem wished to see at least a trace of the beloved's hand, here the plover leaves its tracks yet its way is unknown, advancing to the grief of a love that does not arrive even when a trace remains.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Okikaze
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
- Prev Poem
-
Ato o dani kusa no hatsuka ni miteshigana musubu bakari no hodo narazu tomo
- Next Poem
-
Akihagi no eda mo tōo ni oku tsuyu no kesa kienu tomo iro ni ideme ya