黄葉の過ぎにし子らと携はり
遊びし磯を見れば悲しも
遊びし磯を見れば悲しも
- Roma-ji
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Momichiba no suginishi kora to tazusawari asobishi iso o mireba kanashi mo
- English Translation
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Like the autumn leaves
she has passed and gone away;
hand in hand with her
I once played along this shore,
and to see it now is sorrow.
- Meaning
- When I look at the rocky shore where I once walked hand in hand with my wife, now passed away like the autumn leaves, how sad it is.
- Commentary
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Book Nine Elegies 1796
Headnote: "Four poems composed in the province of Kii"
Seeing again the rocky shore where he once played hand in hand with his late wife, the speaker is overcome with grief. A place of happy memories has become a place that calls forth sorrow.
This is the first of four poems composed in Kii in memory of a dead wife. It is thought to have been composed on revisiting, after her death, a Kii shore he had once visited with her.
The author, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, was a court poet active in the reigns of Jitō and Monmu. This poem is taken from the Hitomaro Collection, which is thought to contain both Hitomaro's own poems and poems by others that he gathered.
The first line, "like the autumn leaves," is a pillow word for sugu, "to pass," from leaves that scatter and fall.
The second line, "she has passed and gone away," uses sugu for dying, with the affectionate suffix ra. Like the fourth line of the next poem, it uses suginishi for the dead wife.
The third line, "hand in hand with her," recalls their companionship.
The fourth line, "I once played along this shore," uses shi, the attributive of the past ki.
The final line, "and to see it now is sorrow," ends with the exclamatory mo, corresponding to the close of 1798, "to see it now is lonely," layering expressions of grief within the sequence.
- Author
- Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
- Source
- Manyoshu
- Prev Poem
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Imoragari imaki no mine ni shigeritatsu tsumamatsu no ki wa furuhito mikemu
- Next Poem
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Shioke tatsu ariso ni wa aredo yuku mizu no suginishi imo ga katami to zo koshi