鶏が鳴く東壮士の妻別れ
悲しくありけむ年の緒長み
悲しくありけむ年の緒長み
- Roma-ji
-
Tori ga naku azumaotoko no tsumawakare kanashiku arikemu toshi no o nagami
- English Translation
-
Where the cock crows first,
the eastern men taking leave
of the wives they love,
how sorrowful it must have been,
with the cord of years so long
- Meaning
- How sad the eastern men's partings from their wives must have been, with so many long years ahead apart.
- Commentary
-
Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4333
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "A poem with tanka composed afterward, pained at the grief of the frontier guards' partings."
How sad the eastern men's partings from their wives must have been, the years apart being so long: the second envoy, imagining the guards' farewells. The left note attributes it to Ōtomo no Yakamochi, Junior Assistant Minister of Military Affairs, on the eighth day of the second month. Where the preceding poem pictured the wives' grief, this one takes in the parting of husband and wife as a whole and finds the reason for sorrow in the length of the three-year term.
The author, Ōtomo no Yakamochi, son of Ōtomo no Tabito, was at this time Junior Assistant Minister of Military Affairs.
The first line, "tori ga naku," "where the cock crows," is a pillow word for "the East."
The second line, "azumaotoko no," "the men of the East," shows that most guards were conscripted from the eastern provinces.
The third line, "tsumawakare," "parting from their wives," takes up "loath to part" of the preceding poem.
The fourth line, "kanashiku arikemu," with kemu, conjecture about the past, imagines how sad it must have been. The poem pauses here.
The closing line, "toshi no o nagami," uses mi to give a reason: "because the years are long." By inversion the cause of sorrow comes afterward.
- Author
- Otomo no Yakamochi
- Source
- Manyoshu
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Masurao no yuki torioite idete ikeba wakare o oshimi nagekikemu tsuma
- Next Poem
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Unahara o tōku watarite toshi fu tomo kora ga musuberu himo toku na yume