わが宿の垣根に咲ける卯の花の
憂きことしげき世にこそありけれ
憂きことしげき世にこそありけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Waga yado no kakine ni sakeru u no hana no ukikoto shigeki yo ni koso arikere
- English Translation
-
Here beside my house
by the hedge the deutzia
blooms in thick white clusters—
so thick with sorrows, too,
is this world in which we live.
- Meaning
- Like the deutzia blooming thick along the hedge of my house, this world is thick with sorrows.
- Commentary
-
Summer Poems 136
Headnote: "Deutzia flowers"
From the dense blooming of deutzia along the hedge of his house, the poet turns to a lament for a world full of hardship. The early-summer scene of white flowers becomes the occasion for expressing his weariness with the world.
The Ruijū text places this poem in its section of "poems found in another manuscript and in printed editions." In the source text consulted, line 3 appears as "u no hana," and the particle no has been supplied here on the basis of the syllable count.
Line 1, "beside my house," repeats the words of line 3 in the preceding poem, 135, continuing the scene of the poet's own garden.
Line 2: ru is the attributive of the resultative ri, describing the deutzia as blooming by the hedge.
Line 3: the upper lines form a preface that leads, through the repeated sound u, to uki ("sorrowful").
Line 4: shigeki is a pivot word meaning both that the deutzia grows thick and that sorrows are many.
Line 5 concludes the binding particle koso with the evaluative form kere, lamenting anew the hardships of the world. The next poem, 137, also leads from deutzia to "sorrowful," and the two form a pair.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
- Prev Poem
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Haru sugite ikuka mo aranedo waga yado no ike no fujinami utsuroinikeri
- Next Poem
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Kami matsuru uzuki ni nareba u no hana no uki koto no ha no kazu ya masaramu