Naku namida yo wa mina umi to narinanan onaji nagisa ni nagareyorubeku - Shui Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

泣く涙世はみな海となりななん
同じ渚に流れ寄るべく

Roma-ji: Naku namida yo wa mina umi to narinanan onaji nagisa ni nagareyorubeku
English Translation: Let the tears I weep
turn all the world to ocean,
that is all I ask,
so that to the very shore
where you are, I too might drift.
Meaning: Let the tears I weep turn the whole world into sea, so that I too might drift ashore on the same beach where you, my exiled child, have been cast.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 925

Headnote: "When the monk Zen'yū was sent into exile, his mother wrote and sent this"
The poem wishes that the tears she weeps would turn the whole world into sea, so that she might drift to the same shore as her exiled son. A mother's aching wish to reach the child torn far from her, even by drifting across a sea of tears, is expressed through bold exaggeration.
According to the headnote, the mother sent this when the monk Zen'yū was exiled. Zen'yū was a priest of the Tōkōji temple, and it is said that in the eighth year of Kanpyō he was banished to Izu Province on suspicion of an affair with Fujiwara no Takaiko, consort of Emperor Seiwa. A mother's poem for her child stands at the head of this book of love.
The author, "Mother of the Monk Zen'yū", was the mother of Zen'yū, a priest of the Tōkōji; her own name has not come down to us.
This is the opening poem of the book. Where the closing poem, 999, ends by heaping love upon "waga mi hitotsu," this one self alone, the opening spreads outward, wishing that tears would make "yo wa mina umi," the whole world a sea. The two poems answer each other at the book's beginning and end, voicing grief on the scales of the whole world and of a single self.

First line, "naku namida," means "the tears I weep." Opening the book with tears, it begins the run of tear poems that follows.
Second line, "yo wa mina umi to," means "the whole world into sea," a bold exaggeration in which tears fill the world.
Third line, "narinanan," means "I wish it would become," with "na" the irrealis of the perfective "nu" and "nan" a final particle wishing something of another. The poem breaks here.
Fourth line, "onaji nagisa ni," means "to the same shore" as her exiled child, a word associated with "umi," the sea.
Final line, "nagareyorubeku," means "so that I might drift ashore," with "beku" the continuative of "beshi" expressing possibility. The lower verse adds the purpose of the wish in the third line, and "nagare," drifting, also echoes the son's being sent into exile.
Author: Mother of the Monk Zen'yū
Source: Shui Wakashu
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