Matsugane no makura mo nani ka ada naramu tama no yuka tote tsune no toko ka wa - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

松が根の枕も何かあだならむ
玉の床とて常の床かは

Roma-ji: Matsugane no makura mo nani ka ada naramu tama no yuka tote tsune no toko ka wa
English Translation: Why should a pillow
of pine roots be counted
a thing of no worth?
even a bed adorned with jewels,
is it a bed that lasts forever?
Meaning: Why should a pillow of pine roots be thought fleeting? Even a jeweled bed in a palace—is it a bed that lasts forever? It is not.
Commentary: Book Eight Travel Poems 510

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed on the theme of travel when he called for a hundred-poem sequence"
Like the preceding poem, composed by Sutoku on the topic of travel for the Kyūan Hyakushu. Why should a pillow of pine roots on the road be thought fleeting? Even a jeweled bed in a palace is no bed that lasts forever, he says. Both the hard bed of travel and the splendid bed of the palace are only temporary in an impermanent world, and the poem holds this Buddhist sense of impermanence.
The author, "Poem by Retired Emperor Sutoku," is Emperor Sutoku, the seventy-fifth sovereign. The first son of Emperor Toba, after abdicating he called for the Kyūan Hyakushu and had Fujiwara no Akisuke compile the Shika Wakashū. Defeated in the Hōgen Disturbance of 1156, he was exiled to Sanuki and died there. He has a poem in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.
It is the second in the sequence of travel poems from the Kyūan Hyakushu.

First line, "matsugane no": "of pine roots," the pillow of a night on the road. Poems 520 and 525 of this book also sing of pine roots as a pillow.
Second line, "makura mo nani ka": the rhetorical "nani ka" closes with the attributive "mu" in the third line.
Third line, "ada naramu": "ada" means fleeting, temporary, "why should it be fleeting? It is not." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "tama no yuka tote": "tama no yuka" is a fine bed adorned with jewels, a palace bedchamber, and "tote" means "even though."
Fifth line, "tsune no toko ka wa": the rhetorical "ka wa," "is it a bed that lasts forever? It is not." Setting the jeweled bed against the pillow of pine roots, it shows that both are impermanent.
Author: Retired Emperor Sutoku
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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