Utsutsu o mo utsutsu to ikaga sadamubeki yume ni mo yume o mizu wa koso arame - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

現をも現といかが定むべき
夢にも夢を見ずはこそあらめ

Roma-ji: Utsutsu o mo utsutsu to ikaga sadamubeki yume ni mo yume o mizu wa koso arame
English Translation: Even waking life,
how can we be certain
that it is waking?
It might be, were it not that
in dreams we dream of dreaming
Meaning: How can we ever be certain that waking is truly waking? It might be so, if only we did not dream of dreaming within our dreams.
Commentary: Book Seventeen Miscellaneous Poems II 1128

Headnote: "Composed on the theme of impermanence when I presented a hundred-poem sequence"
This poem was composed on the theme of impermanence when he presented a hundred-poem sequence to Retired Emperor Sutoku. How can we fix waking as waking; it might be so if in dreams we did not dream of dreams, he says. People sometimes dream within dreams, and on waking from a dream within a dream they are still dreaming. If so, the reality we think we are awake in now may be no more than part of a greater dream, and he sings intellectually of the uncertainty of an impermanent world. The sequence is known as the Kyūan Hundred.
The author, "Fujiwara no Suemichi Ason," was a son of Provisional Major Counselor Fujiwara no Munemichi. He was known as a master of the biwa and the koto.
From this poem to 1131 are poems on impermanence from the same hundred-poem sequence. It shares the question of dream and waking with "izure ka utsutsu" in the second line of 1130 of this book.

First line, "utsutsu o mo": "waking reality, too."
Second line, "utsutsu to ikaga": "how, as reality," with "ikaga" rhetorical, answering "beki" in the third line. It shares "utsutsu" with "izure ka utsutsu" in the second line of 1130 of this book.
Third line, "sadamubeki": "can we decide it? We cannot." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "yume ni mo yume o": "a dream even within a dream," meaning that one dreams again within a dream.
Fifth line, "mizu wa koso arame": "zu wa" is a negative supposition, and "koso," an emphatic binding particle, closes with "me," the realis of the conjectural "mu," "it would be so if we did not."
Author: Fujiwara no Suemichi
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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