沖つ波八十島かけて住む千鳥
心ひとつといかが頼まむ
心ひとつといかが頼まむ
- Roma-ji
-
Okitsunami yasoshima kakete sumu chidori kokoro hitotsu to ikaga tanomamu
- English Translation
-
Over offshore waves
ranging across eighty isles
the plovers dwell;
how could I trust that your heart
is single and true to me?
- Meaning
- Like the plover that lives ranging over the eighty isles amid the offshore waves, how can I trust that your heart is single?
- Commentary
-
Miscellaneous Poems 605
Headnote: "Sent to the monk Sozen when he was setting off somewhere"
Sent to the monk Sozen as he set out on a journey, the poem likens him to the plover that ranges over many islands, and teasingly asks how one could trust his heart to be single. Sozen was Tō no Taneyuki, a poet who served close to Sanetomo.
It was included in the imperial anthology Shokushūi Wakashū. In the base text it is followed by Sozen's reply, asking how, though the plover go about the eighty isles, it could forget the bay where it has long dwelt. The Ruijū text places it among the "poems found in other and printed texts."
Line 1 means "waves of the offing."
Line 2 means "ranging over eighty isles."
Line 3 means "the plover that dwells," figuring the departing Sozen.
Line 4 means "that the heart is one," setting "one" against the many isles of line 2.
Line 5 means "how could I trust it?" a rhetorical question.
- Author
- Minamoto no Sanetomo
- Source
- Kinkaishu
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