Nagaraete ikeru o ika ni modokamashi ukimi no hodo o yoso ni omowaba - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

長らへて生けるをいかにもどかまし
憂き身のほどをよそに思はば

Roma-ji: Nagaraete ikeru o ika ni modokamashi ukimi no hodo o yoso ni omowaba
English Translation: Living on and on,
how I would find fault with one
who lingers so,
if I thought of this sad lot
as someone else's, not mine.
Meaning: If I were to think of my wretched lot as someone else's, how I would find fault with one who lingers on alive like this!
Commentary: Book Eighteen Miscellaneous Poems III 1840

Headnote: "When Prince-Priest Shukaku had poets compose fifty-poem sequences."
This is the fifth of the poems on resenting and lamenting the world. If he thought of his wretched lot as another's, how he would find fault with one who lingers on like this! Looking at himself as if from outside, he reflects on the unseemliness of living on. According to the headnote, it belongs to a fifty-poem sequence that Prince-Priest Shukaku had poets compose.
The author, "Minamoto no Moromitsu," was a poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods.
Prince-Priest Shukaku was a son of Emperor Go-Shirakawa and became abbot of Ninnaji.

The first line, "nagaraete," means "living on."
The second line, "ikeru o ika ni," means "how much, at being alive."
The third line, "modokamashi," means "I would find fault." "Mashi" is counterfactual, answering the supposition in the last line, and the poem pauses here.
The fourth line, "ukimi no hodo o," means "the lot of my wretched self."
The last line, "yoso ni omowaba," means "if I thought of it as another's." Through inversion it gives the supposition afterward, reflecting that he himself lives in a way he would blame in another.
Author: Minamoto no Moromitsu
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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