Ukihito o shinobu beshi to wa omoiki ya waga kokoro sae nado kawaruran - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

憂き人を偲ぶべしとは思ひきや
我が心さへなど変はるらん

Roma-ji: Ukihito o shinobu beshi to wa omoiki ya waga kokoro sae nado kawaruran
English Translation: Did I ever think
that I should come to long for
one so cold to me?
Why is it that even my
own heart should so change as well?
Meaning: Did I ever imagine that I would come to long for one so cold to me? Why is it that my own heart, too, should change like this?
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 918

Headnote: "Composed as a love poem when presenting a hundred-poem sequence"
Composed as a love poem when she presented a hundred-poem sequence. Did I ever think I would long for one so cold, she asks; why should even my own heart change? Though the beloved has changed and grown cold, her own heart, far from merely resenting it, turns instead toward longing, and she is bewildered by this unexpected movement of her feelings. Against the other's change of heart, the poem looks at the changes in her own. The sequence is the Kyūan Hundred-Poem Sequences presented to Retired Emperor Sutoku.
The author, "Taikenmon'in no Horikawa," was the daughter of Minamoto no Akinaka, Head of the Council of Divinities. She served Taikenmon'in Fujiwara no Tamako, consort of Emperor Toba, and took the tonsure when her mistress did. She was one of the poets of the Kyūan sequences, and a poem of hers is included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.
The next poem, 919, is by her younger sister Jōsaimon'in no Hyōe, so that poems by the two sisters from the same sequence stand side by side. This poem questions the change in "even my own heart," while the next, "tsuraki wa ima no kokoro nomi ka wa," extends its thought to bonds from former lives, and both sing of the shifting heart.

First line, "ukihito o": "ukihito" is a cold person, one who causes pain.
Second line, "shinobu beshi to wa": "shinobu" means to long for, and "beshi" expresses what must or is fated to be, "that I should come to long for."
Third line, "omoiki ya": "ki" is the past auxiliary and "ya" a rhetorical particle, "did I think it? never." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "waga kokoro sae": "sae" is an additive particle, "not only his heart but even mine." It answers "ima no kokoro nomi ka wa" in the fourth and fifth lines of the next poem, 919, through the word "kokoro."
Fifth line, "nado kawaruran": "nado" means "why," and "ran" is the present conjectural "ramu" guessing at a cause, "why should it change?"
Author: Taikenmon-in no Horikawa
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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