Yo no naka wa uki mi ni soeru kage nare ya omoi sutsuredo hanarezarikeri - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

世の中は憂き身に添へる影なれや
思ひ捨つれど離れざりけり

Roma-ji: Yo no naka wa uki mi ni soeru kage nare ya omoi sutsuredo hanarezarikeri
English Translation: This world of ours,
is it a shadow clinging
to my wretched self?
Though I try to cast it off,
it will not leave my side
Meaning: This world of ours, is it a shadow that clings to my wretched self? However I try to cast it from my mind, it never leaves me.
Commentary: Book Eighteen Miscellaneous Poems III 1161

Headnote: "Envoy"
The preceding poem, 1160, is a long poem Toshiyori composed as a poem of personal grievance when he presented a hundred-poem sequence in the reign of Emperor Horikawa, and this poem is the envoy attached to it. Is this world a shadow clinging to my wretched self? Though I try to cast it off, it does not leave me, he says. Taking up the long poem's lament over his unrewarded life, and its admission that, though he longed for the next world, the people dear to him held him back, he gathers into a single poem his attachment to the world, which he cannot throw away, likening it to a shadow that never leaves the body.
The author, "Minamoto no Toshiyori Ason," was a son of the Major Counselor Minamoto no Tsunenobu. He was active in the poetry circle of Emperor Horikawa and compiled the Kin'yō Wakashū at the command of Retired Emperor Shirakawa.
This book gathers poems in forms and devices other than the ordinary tanka, such as long poems, sedōka, acrostics, hidden-name poems and humorous poems, and this poem is the envoy following the long poem that opens the book. Where the closing poem, 1201, ends the book by saying that one reaches paradise through devotion, this poem near the opening laments a world that will not let go, so the beginning and end of the book answer each other with a heart unable to leave the world and a heart arriving at the Buddhist path.

First line, "yo no naka wa": "this world," the secular world, presenting the theme of the poem.
Second line, "uki mi ni soeru": "uki mi" is my wretched self, and "soeru" means clinging to it, with "ru" the attributive of the perfective-continuative "ri."
Third line, "kage nare ya": "kage" is the shadow that follows the body, and "nare ya," the perfective form of the copula "nari" with the interrogative binding particle "ya," means "is it a shadow?" The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "omoi sutsuredo": "though I try to cast it off," taking up the long poem's longing for the next world that he could not fulfill.
Fifth line, "hanarezarikeri": "it does not leave me," with "keri" an exclamatory auxiliary. Just as the shadow never leaves the body, he realizes with a sigh that the world never leaves him either.
Author: Minamoto no Toshiyori
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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