道もなく積もれる雪に跡絶えて
古里いかにさびしかるらむ
古里いかにさびしかるらむ
- Roma-ji
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Michi mo naku tsumoreru yuki ni ato taete furusato ika ni sabishikaruramu
- English Translation
-
With no path to see
in the snow piled up so deep,
all trace of feet gone,
my old home, how very lonely
it must now be there
- Meaning
- With the snow piled so deep that no path can be seen and all traces of visitors gone, how lonely my old home must be.
- Commentary
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Book Four Winter Poems 292
With snow piled so deep the road cannot be seen and visitors' traces gone, how lonely the old village must be, the poet imagines. The poem sings of the loneliness of a home village shut in by snow and cut off from visitors.
Like the preceding poem, 291, it sings of 'all trace gone', and poems imagining places where snow has erased the traces of people stand together. Where the preceding poem thought from the capital of the timber hills, this one turns its heart to an old home.
Poems 277 through 293 in this book center on snow, with poems on falconry set among them at 281 through 283.
The author was Higo, a daughter of Fujiwara no Sadanari, Governor of Higo, who served in the household of the Kyōgoku Regent Fujiwara no Morozane. She was one of the poets of the Horikawa Hundred-Poem Sequences.
First line, 'michi mo naku', means with no path to be seen.
Second line, 'tsumoreru yuki ni', means in the snow piled up. The word tsumoru, to pile up, is also sung in poem 303 in this book.
Third line, 'ato taete', means all trace gone, taking up the final line 'every trace must have vanished' of the preceding poem, 291.
Fourth line, 'furusato ika ni', means my old home, how, furusato being a place once lived in or a familiar village.
Final line, 'sabishikaruramu', means must be lonely, closing with the present conjecture ramu.
- Author
- Kyōgoku Kanpaku-ke no Higo
- Source
- Kinyo Wakashu
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Miyako dani yuki furinureba shigaraki no maki no somayama ato taenuramu
- Next Poem
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Kakikurashi ame furu yowa ya ika naramu tsuki to yuki to wa kai nakarikeri