Gosenshu #1090

When she was without a regular man and was brooding.

    Without an oar like
those on boats rowed in the bay
    where fisherfolk live,
how sorrowful am I
-- oh this world! -- crossing the sea.

—25 July 2011

Original by Ono no Komachi. In the headnote, she literally has "thoughts about things," which is usually understood in classical poetry to mean "brooding over personal affairs." Even discarding the possible pivot-reading of nami = "wave" in addition to "because there isn't," this is a knotty poem. The original first two lines (my l.2-3) are purely prefatory, but set up the seafaring imagery. If you pretend the fourth line has yo no umi ("the sea of the world") instead of yo o umi ("Oh world! -- the sea"), you can get the final line "crossing the sea of the world!" -- better poetry, but that's no excuse for misreading. Compare her drifting here with the rootlessness of KKS #938.


ame no sumu
ura kogu fune no
kaji o nami
yo o umi wataru
ware zo kanashiki

ETA: The confusions over l.4 can be resolved by realizing (or have it pointed out) that umi ("sea") is a pivot-word, with the alternate reading being the stem form of umu, "to tire of," which takes "world" as its direct object (marked with o). Always, when you are confused by Komachi, look for a pivot-word. After playing around for a bit, the best replacement I've come up with is "how sorrowful am I, tired / of the world, crossing the sea." But I'll keep tinkering with it a bit more.

---L.