命をしかけて契りし仲なれば
絶ゆるは死ぬる心地こそすれ
絶ゆるは死ぬる心地こそすれ
- Roma-ji
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Inochi o shi kakete chigirishi naka nareba tayuru wa shinuru kokochi koso sure
- English Translation
-
Since ours is a bond
pledged with life itself
laid down as the stake,
its breaking off feels to me
like dying, nothing less
- Meaning
- Since ours is a bond pledged with our very lives at stake, its breaking off feels to me like dying.
- Commentary
-
Book Seven Love Poems I 403
Since theirs is a bond pledged with life itself at stake, its breaking off feels to the poet like dying. Binding pledge and life into one, the poem conveys the pain of a severed bond.
Some manuscripts name the Preceptor Jitsugen as the author and give the headnote 'Composed when people were composing on the sentiment of love.' It would then be a poem from such a gathering.
Poem 380 and the closing poem, 420, in this book also join life and love, and poem 400 sings of pledges and death.
First line, 'inochi o shi', means life itself, with the intensive particle shi. Like the first line 'inochi dani' of poem 380 in this book, it opens with life.
Second line, 'kakete chigirishi', means pledged with it at stake, using the attributive of the past ki. Like the second line 'chigirishi hito mo' of poem 400 in this book, it sings of a pledge.
Third line, 'naka nareba', means since it is a bond, the realis with ba forming a definite condition.
Fourth line, 'tayuru wa shinuru', means its ending is dying, tayu, to break off, echoing the ending of a life.
Final line, 'kokochi koso sure', means so it feels, the particle koso binding with the realis sure.
- Source
- Kinyo Wakashu
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