衣しも多くあらなむ取り替へて
着ればや君が面忘れたる
着ればや君が面忘れたる
- Roma-ji
-
Koromo shimo ōku aranamu torikaete kireba ya kimi ga omowasuretaru
- English Translation
-
Your robes must be
many, many, I suppose;
changing one for one
you put them on, is that why
you have forgotten my face?
- Meaning
- You must have many robes, I suppose. Is it because you keep changing one for another that you have forgotten my face?
- Commentary
-
Book Eleven Love Poems Ancient and Modern I 2829
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Metaphorical Poems"
Is it because he has many robes and keeps changing one for another that he has forgotten her face? So the speaker reproaches a lover whose visits have stopped. Changing robes stands for his going to one woman after another, and the reproach is delivered with irony.
By the left note "the two poems above express feelings through a robe," this poem and the preceding poem, 2828, both use garments as their figure. Where that poem likened the speaker's own hidden love to a robe worn beneath, this one likens the other's fickleness to robes taken off and changed, so that the same image of clothing sets one's own heart against the other's.
The author is unknown. The anonymous poems of Book Eleven gather the love poems of people whose names have not come down to us.
First line, "koromo shimo": "robes, indeed." "Shimo" is emphatic, singling out robes as the target of the irony.
Second line, "ōku aranamu": understood as "there must be many." "Namu" is properly a final particle expressing a wish directed at another, and the line is variously interpreted; here, following the sense of the lower lines, it is taken as a guess that he has many robes. The sense breaks off here after the second line.
Third line, "torikaete": "changing one for another." Changing robes is overlaid with changing the women one visits.
Fourth line, "kireba ya kimi ga": "is it because you wear them that you." "Ba" after the perfective form gives a cause, and the interrogative particle "ya" is answered by "taru" in the last line, a kakari-musubi construction.
Fifth line, "omowasuretaru": "have forgotten my face." "Taru," the attributive form of the perfective "tari," closes the construction begun by "ya" and voices resentment at a lover long absent.
- Source
- Manyoshu
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Kurenai no kozome no kinu o shita ni kiba hito no miraku ni nioi idemu kamo
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Azusayumi yuzuka makikae nakami sashi sara ni hiku tomo kimi ga manimani