Hakanaku mo kesa no wakare no oshiki kana itsuka wa hito o nagaraete mishi - Shika Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

はかなくも今朝の別れの惜しきかな
いつかは人をながらへて見し

Roma-ji: Hakanaku mo kesa no wakare no oshiki kana itsuka wa hito o nagaraete mishi
English Translation: How fleeting it is,
yet I grieve for this morning's
parting all the same;
when have I ever seen one
who lived on and on for long?
Meaning: Fleeting as it is, how I grieve over this morning's parting. When have I ever seen anyone go on living for long?
Commentary: Book Six Parting Poems 186

A poem that ties the grief of this morning's parting to the fleetingness of human life. One has never seen anyone live on for long, and if this parting may be the last, even a brief farewell is to be mourned; thoughts of impermanence deepen the sorrow of parting.
Placed at the end of the book of parting poems, it closes, with the transience of human life, a book that began with the unease of one left in the capital.

First line, "hakanaku mo": "hakanashi" means frail and vain. It answers "obotsukanasa o" in 172 at the head of the book, so the parting poems begin in unease and end in transience.
Second line, "kesa no wakare no," names a morning parting, fixing the farewell in the present moment.
Third line, "oshiki kana": the exclamatory "kana" ends the phrase, and the poem breaks here.
Fourth line, "itsuka wa hito o": "itsuka wa" is rhetorical, leading to "when have I ever... ? Never."
Final line, "nagaraete mishi": "nagarau" means to live on, and "shi," the attributive of the past auxiliary "ki," concludes the "ka" of the fourth line. Contrasting with the blessing of a thousand ages in the preceding poem, 185, it closes by saying no one has ever been seen to live on forever.
Source: Shika Wakashu
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