Yo no naka ni omoiyaredomo ko o kouru omoi ni masaru omoi naki kana - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

世の中におもひやれども子を戀ふる
思ひにまさる思ひなきかな

Roma-ji: Yo no naka ni omoiyaredomo ko o kouru omoi ni masaru omoi naki kana
English Translation: Though in this world I
let my thoughts roam far and wide,
no thought can surpass
the thought of longing for one's
child, the child who is no more
Meaning: However far my thoughts may wander in this world, there is no feeling deeper than a parent's longing for a lost child.
Commentary: 20 The Eleventh Day of the First Month: The Place Called Hane

At dawn on the eleventh day of the first month, the party set out for Murotsu. Everyone was still asleep and the state of the sea could not be seen; they could tell east from west only by the moon. Before long the night gave way to day, and while they washed their hands and went through their usual morning observances, noon came and they reached a place called Hane. Hearing the name, a little child asked, "Is the place called Hane like a bird's wing?" and everyone laughed.
Hane corresponds to present-day Hane-chō in Muroto City, Kōchi Prefecture. The young girl who composes a poem in this scene was a girl attending the party. The daughter who had died was the former governor's child, and she had been with them when they came down from the capital to Tosa.
The child's question about Hane brought the lost daughter back to mind once more, and people wondered when they would ever forget. Her mother's grief was all the sharper this day because the number who had come down to Tosa was now incomplete on the way home. Recalling the line "kazu wa tarade zo kaeru beranaru" from the Kokin Wakashū poem "Kita e yuku kari zo nakunaru tsurete koshi kazu wa tarade zo kaeru beranaru," someone composed this poem.
The diary records no response to it, but longing for the lost child is told again and again in what follows, leading to the poems of the "shells of forgetting" on the fourth day of the second month and to "Umareshi mo kaeranu mono o waga yado ni komatsu no aru o miru ga kanashisa" at the arrival home in the capital.

The first line, "Yo no naka ni," means "in this world." The second line, "omoiyaredomo," means "though I turn my thoughts this way and that," with "domo" a concessive particle. The third line, "ko o kouru," means "longing for the child one has lost."
The fourth and final lines, "omoi ni masaru omoi naki kana," say that no feeling surpasses the longing for one's child, closing with the exclamatory particle "kana."
By repeating "omoi" (thought, feeling) three times, the poem conveys with great force how every thought, however it wanders, comes back in the end to longing for the child. Without any elaborate technique, it states a parent's grief plainly and directly.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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