枕太刀腰に取り佩きま愛しき
背ろが罷き来む月の知らなく
背ろが罷き来む月の知らなく
- Roma-ji
-
Makuratashi koshi ni torihaki makanashiki sero ga makikomu tsuku no shiranaku
- English Translation
-
The sword by his pillow
he has taken and girded on,
my husband so dear;
the month when he will come home
is something I cannot know
- Meaning
- My beloved husband took the sword from beside his pillow and girded it on, and I do not know in what month he will come home.
- Commentary
-
Book Twenty Frontier Guard Poems 4413
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Poems of the frontier guards sent in rotation to the provinces of Tsukushi in the second month of Tenpyō Shōhō 7, year of the wood sheep."
My dear husband girded on the sword from beside his pillow, and I do not know the month he will return: a guard's wife worries over her husband's return. According to the left note, Azumi no Mikuni, provincial secretary and escort officer of Musashi, presented twenty poems on the twenty-ninth day of the second month, and the clumsy ones were left out. This is the first. The Musashi poems include many by guards' wives, giving voice to those left behind. Tashi for tachi and tsuku for tsuki are dialect forms.
The author, Ōtomobe no Matarime, was the wife of Hinokuma no Toneri no Iwasaki, a regular guard from Naka District in Musashi; nothing more is known of her.
The first line, "makuratashi," a sword kept by the pillow at night, was a weapon always close to her husband.
The second line, "koshi ni torihaki," "girding it at his waist," shows him setting out.
The third line, "makanashiki," with the prefix ma, means "so dear."
The fourth line, "sero ga makikomu," "my husband's return," uses sero, an affectionate word for a husband.
The closing line, "tsuku no shiranaku," "the month unknown," uses naku, a nominal form of the negative zu.
- Author
- Ōtomobe no Matarime
- Source
- Manyoshu
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