夢とのみ思ひなさるるうつつこそ
あひ見しことのかひなかりけれ
あひ見しことのかひなかりけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Yume to nomi omoinasaruru utsutsu koso aimishi koto no kai nakarikere
- English Translation
-
That I cannot help
but think it only a dream,
this, our waking world,
makes the meeting that we had
seem to have been all for naught.
- Meaning
- Waking life itself, which I cannot help but take for a dream, makes the meeting we truly had seem all for nothing.
- Commentary
-
Love Poems 583
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Meeting in a dream"
The meeting that truly took place in waking life seems so fleeting that it feels like nothing more than a dream, and the poet laments that the meeting was then all for nothing.
Where the two preceding poems told of meeting in a dream, this one tells of a real meeting that seems like a dream, reversing dream and reality to close the group of three.
First line, “yume to nomi”: as nothing but a dream.
Second line, “omoinasaruru”: omoinasu is to take something as so, and ruru is spontaneous: it cannot help but seem so.
Third line, “utsutsu koso”: utsutsu is waking reality; the binding particle koso is answered by the perfective kere at the end.
Fourth line, “aimishi koto no”: aimiru is for lovers to meet and be together.
Fifth line, “kai nakarikere”: it was all for nothing, closing in the perfective form required by koso.
- Author
- Saigyō
- Source
- Sankashu
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Au to miru koto o kagireru yumeji nite samuru wakare no nakaramashikaba
- Next Poem
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Kesa yori zo hito no kokoro wa tsurakarade akehanareyuku sora o uramuru