朝鳥の哭のみし泣かむ我妹子に
今またさらに逢ふよしをなみ
今またさらに逢ふよしをなみ
- Roma-ji
-
Asatori no ne nomi shi nakamu wagimoko ni ima mata sara ni au yoshi o nami
- English Translation
-
Like the morning birds
I will do naught else but weep,
for with my dear wife
now, again, once more to meet,
there is no way left to me.
- Meaning
- Like the birds at dawn I will only cry aloud, for there is no way left for me to meet my wife again.
- Commentary
-
Book Three Elegies 483
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem with tanka composed by Takahashi no Ason in grief for his dead wife" — "Envoy"
This is the second envoy to the long poem mourning his dead wife, and it closes Book Three. Since there is no way to meet his wife again, he will weep aloud like the birds crying at dawn—grief beyond consolation. It uses a phrase of the same spirit as "I can only weep aloud" in poem 456. Where poem 235 at the head of the book was a bright court poem praising the sovereign as a god, the book ends with an elegy lamenting a wife who can never be met again, symbolizing its movement from Miscellaneous Poems to Elegies. Note that the main text of the second line reads "I will weep aloud" (nakamu), which does not match nakayu in the kana reading line; here the main text is followed.
A left note says these three poems were composed by Takahashi no Ason on the twentieth day of the seventh month of Tenpyō 16 (744); his personal name is unknown, but he is said to be a son of the Chief Steward.
There is no settled view on who Takahashi no Ason was, since his personal name has not come down. Ason is a hereditary title, and the left note calls him "a son of the Chief Steward," so he is thought to have been a son of the head of the Imperial Table Office.
First line "Like the morning birds": asatori are birds that cry at dawn, leading to ne, "weeping aloud."
Second line "I will do naught else but weep": ne is audible weeping, shi emphatic, and mu intention. The sentence breaks here. It echoes the fourth line of poem 456.
Third line "for with my dear wife" names his wife.
Fourth line "now, again, once more to meet" means once again.
Fifth line "there is no way left to me": yoshi is a means, and o ... mi gives the cause, stating by inversion the reason for his weeping.
- Author
- Takahashi no Ason
- Source
- Manyoshu
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