Michinobe no hotaru bakari o shirube nite hitori zo izuru yūyami no sora - Shin Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

道のべの蛍ばかりをしるべにて
ひとりぞ出づる夕闇の空

Roma-ji: Michinobe no hotaru bakari o shirube nite hitori zo izuru yūyami no sora
English Translation: By the fireflies
along the wayside only
as my guiding light,
alone it is I venture out
into the dusk-dark sky.
Meaning: With only the fireflies by the wayside as my guide, I set out alone beneath the dark evening sky.
Commentary: Book Twenty Buddhist Poems 1951

Headnote: "When I composed a Hundred Poems on Buddhist Texts at the urging of others, on 'The wisdom of the Two Vehicles, which knows only emptiness, is like the light of fireflies.'"
This is the first poem in the sequence of poems from the Hundred Poems on Buddhist Texts by Jakuzen and others. The poet goes out alone into the evening darkness with only the fireflies by the wayside to guide him. According to the headnote, it was composed on the meaning of "The wisdom of the Two Vehicles, which knows only emptiness, is like the light of fireflies," when he composed a Hundred Poems on Buddhist Texts at the urging of others.
The teaching that the wisdom of the Two Vehicles, awakened only to emptiness, is faint as firefly light and lights only oneself, is portrayed as the forlornness of one walking an evening road in the dark.
The author, "Jakuzen Hōshi," whose lay name was Fujiwara no Yorinari, was a son of Fujiwara no Tametada. With his elder brothers Jakunen and Jakuchō he lived in retirement at Ōhara, and the three were called the Three Jaku of Ōhara. He was a close friend of Saigyō.
A Hundred Poems on Buddhist Texts takes phrases from the sutras and treatises as topics for a hundred poems; the set Jakuzen composed at the urging of others is well known. The Two Vehicles are the voice-hearers and the solitary buddhas, and the wisdom that knows only emptiness awakens to emptiness alone, one side of the truth.

The first line, "michinobe no," is the wayside, suggesting the path of practice.
The second line, "hotaru bakari o," carries the phrase's "firefly light" straight into the scene; the particle "bakari" shows that this is the only light to rely on.
The third line, "shirube nite," means "as a guide." In 1922 in this book, the Buddha's guidance was the guide; here it is the faint light of fireflies.
The fourth line, "hitori zo izuru," closes the kakari-musubi of "zo" with the attributive "izuru." "Hitori" (alone) shows the way of the Two Vehicles, who awaken only themselves without saving others, and echoes the "alone" of the solitary buddha in 1935.
The last line, "yūyami no sora," ends on a noun: a dark sky that sets off the faintness of the fireflies' light.
Author: Jakuzen
Source: Shin Kokin Wakashu
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