Toku to omou fune nayamasu wa waga tame ni mizu no kokoro no asaki narikeri - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

とくと思ふ船なやますは我がために
水のこゝろのあさきなりけり

Roma-ji: Toku to omou fune nayamasu wa waga tame ni mizu no kokoro no asaki narikeri
English Translation: What troubles our boat
that we long to hurry on—
it is that for me
the heart of the water here
runs so shallow, so it seems
Meaning: What hinders the boat I long to speed on is simply this: the river's heart runs shallow toward me.
Commentary: 46 The Seventh Day of the Second Month: Struggling Upriver and the Ship's Master's Poems

On the seventh day of the second month, the party brought the boat into the river mouth and rowed upstream, but the water was low and they had a hard time of it. Getting the boat upriver was very difficult.
"The master of the boat" refers to its owner, the former Governor of Tosa whose term had ended, Ki no Tsurayuki. The diary describes this master as sickly, a rough-hewn man to begin with, who knew nothing at all of poetry.
Not satisfied with the single poem "Kitokite wa kawa no horie no mizu o asami fune mo waga mi mo nazumu kyō kana," the master of the boat went on to compose this poem.
The diarist surmises that he composed it unable to contain his joy at nearing the capital, but judges it inferior to the old woman of Awaji's poem. The master himself fretted that it was galling and he should never have spoken, and while he was regretting it night fell and he went to sleep.

The first line, "Toku to omou," means "wishing to arrive quickly." The second line, "fune nayamasu wa," means "what troubles that boat," continuing into the third, "waga tame ni," "toward me."
In the fourth line, "mizu no kokoro no," "kokoro" overlays the depth of the water, its bottom, with the heart of a person. The final line, "asaki narikeri," closes with the exclamatory auxiliary "keri": it is because it is shallow. The shallowness of the water is played against the shallowness, the coldness, of the water's heart.
The poem personifies the shallow river water that thwarts the wish to reach the capital quickly as one whose heart is shallow in its feeling toward the speaker. Like the previous poem it takes the shallow river as its subject and turns it into the shallowness of a heart, a witty poem, yet the narration judges it inferior to the old woman of Awaji's.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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