Uki nagara kenuru awa to mo narinanamu nagarete to dani tanomarenu mi wa - Kokin Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

うきながら消ぬる泡ともなりななむ
流れてとだに頼まれぬ身は

Roma-ji: Uki nagara kenuru awa to mo narinanamu nagarete to dani tanomarenu mi wa
English Translation: Floating in sorrow,
let me become a bubble
that fades from the stream,
this body that cannot trust
it might flow on and endure
Meaning: Let me vanish like foam floating on the water, still in my sorrow, for I cannot even hope that if I live on, things will someday change.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 827

Headnote: "Topic unknown."
The speaker wishes to vanish, still sorrowful, like foam floating and disappearing on the water. The despair of one who cannot even hope that living on will someday be rewarded is expressed through water imagery: foam, floating, flowing. In poem 792 the same foam image said "flowing on, I still find myself trusting," but here it is reversed to "I cannot trust even to flow on," showing the deepening of love's end.
The author, "Tomonori," is Ki no Tomonori, son of Ki no Aritomo and cousin of Ki no Tsurayuki. He rose to Senior Private Secretary and was appointed a compiler of the Kokinshū, but is said to have died before its completion. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.

In the first line uki is a pivot word, meaning both floating on water and sorrowful; nagara means "just as it is."
In the second line kenuru means "vanishing," an image of fleeting foam.
In the third line nanamu, the perfective nu with the wish particle namu, means "I wish to become." The poem breaks here.
In the fourth line nagarete means both foam flowing and time flowing as one lives on, an associated word for foam and floating. Dani means "even."
In the last line re is the potential ru: a self that cannot even hope. By inversion the subject of the third line is placed at the end.
Author: Ki no Tomonori
Source: Kokin Wakashu
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