Gion shouja no kane no koe
shogyou mujou no hibiki ari.
Shara souju no hana no iro
jousha hissui no kotowari o arawasu.
Ogoreru hito mo hisashikarazu,
Tada haru no yo no yume no gotoshi.
Takeki mono mo tsui ni horobinu.
Hitoe ni kaze no mae no chiri ni onaji.
gion shouja: The Gion (or Jetavana) monastery in Central
India. It was erected by a rich layman, called Anathapindika,
after he met Buddha. The ruins still can be seen, and Jetavana
Grove is a common destination of pilgrimage in India.
shogyoumujou: a Buddhist phrase, meaning the
impermanence of thing.
shara souju: "the double trunked sala tree"
- this tree is said to have two trunks growing out in each of
the four directions. Allegedly Buddha was lying under a sala
tree at his death, when he entered Nirvana.
jousha hissui: an idiom meaning "the prosperous
must decline".
kotowari: is "refusal" in modern Japanese,
but it has another meaning, much less used: it also means
"reason, meaning".
hisashikarazu: is a little complicated. It comes from
the adjective hisashii: long (in time). The zu
suffix means negative: "not long". However, the zu
suffix cannot be added directly to the mizenkei stem, as for
verbs, but only to the so-called "kari" form: hisashikara.
gotoshi after a noun or phrase means "it is
like..."
takeki is the rentaikei form of takeshi, an
archaic adjecive meaning "brave".
horobiru means "to be ruined", the nu
suffix indicates that the action is completed.
