Satsumagata oki no kojima ni ware ari to oya ni wa tsuge yo yae no shiokaze - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

薩摩潟沖の小島に我ありと
親には告げよ八重の潮風

Roma-ji: Satsumagata oki no kojima ni ware ari to oya ni wa tsuge yo yae no shiokaze
English Translation: Off Satsuma's coast
on a little island far at sea
I am living still—
tell this to my parents,
sea winds of the eightfold tides
Meaning: Tell my parents that I am alive on a little island off the coast of Satsuma, O sea winds blowing over the countless tides.
Commentary: Book Eight Travel Poems 542

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Composed when, through an unforeseen event, I was in an unknown land"
Like the preceding poem, composed while the poet was in exile on Kikaigashima. Tell my parents that I am on a little island off Satsuma, O sea wind blowing over the many-layered tides, he says. Exiled to a distant island with no way to send word to his parents in the capital, he calls on the sea wind to carry his feelings, a poem of piercing homesickness.
The author, "Taira no Yasuyori (Buddhist name Shōshō)," was a guard in the Northern Quarters serving Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Charged with joining the Shishigatani plot of 1177, he was exiled to Kikaigashima with Shunkan and Fujiwara no Naritsune, and was pardoned and returned to the capital the following year. Taking the tonsure as Shōshō, he wrote the Buddhist tale collection Hōbutsushū.
The Tale of the Heike tells how Yasuyori wrote this and other poems on a thousand wooden stupas and set them adrift, and one washed ashore at Itsukushima in Aki. In a Kokin Wakashū poem, Ono no Takamura, being exiled to Oki, calls on the fishermen's boats to tell people he has rowed out toward the many islands of the wide sea, and it is included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. The conceit of an exile calling out to send word home links it with this poem.

First line, "Satsumagata": the sea off Satsuma, toward Kikaigashima.
Second line, "oki no kojima ni": "on a small island in the offing," Kikaigashima, where he was exiled.
Third line, "ware ari to": "that I am here."
Fourth line, "oya ni wa tsuge yo": "tsuge yo" is imperative, "tell my parents." The poem pauses here.
Fifth line, "yae no shiokaze": "yae" means many-layered, an address to the sea wind blowing across the far-stretching tides. Ending on a noun, it is inverted with the fourth line.
Author: Taira no Yasuyori
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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