人の上と思はばいかにもどかまし
つらきも知らず恋ふる心を
つらきも知らず恋ふる心を
- Roma-ji
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Hito no ue to omowaba ikani modokamashi tsuraki mo shirazu kouru kokoro o
- English Translation
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Were it someone else's,
how I would find fault with it,
how I'd reproach it—
heedless of how cold she is,
this heart that goes on loving
- Meaning
- Were it someone else's, how I would find fault with it: this heart that goes on loving, heedless of how cold she is.
- Commentary
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Book Fourteen Love Poems IV 863
Headnote: "Topic unknown"
Were it someone else's, he says, how I would find fault with this heart that loves on, heedless of her coldness. He looks at his own heart, which keeps loving despite her indifference, from a distance, saying that if it were another's he would have reproached it as foolish. Even as he sees himself objectively, drowning in love, the poem shows a heart that still cannot stop.
The author, "Taira no Saneshige," was a figure of the late Heian period. The details of his career are not clear.
First line, "hito no ue to": "hito no ue" means another's situation, someone else's affair.
Second line, "omowaba ikani": "ba" after the irrealis gives a hypothetical condition, "if I thought." "Ikani" means "how much."
Third line, "modokamashi": "modoku" means to find fault, to reproach, and "mashi" is the counterfactual auxiliary, "how I would have reproached it." The poem pauses here and stands in inverted order with the lower half.
Fourth line, "tsuraki mo shirazu": "tsuraki" is her coldness, "heedless even of that."
Fifth line, "kouru kokoro o": "the heart that loves," showing the object of "modokamashi" in the third line.
- Author
- Taira no Saneshige
- Source
- Senzai Wakashu
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