And here at last is the answer he provided:
長き夜の 遠の眠りの 皆目覚め 波乗り船の 音の 良きかな。
Nagakiyono tōnonemurino minamezame naminorifuneno otono yokikana.
The breakdown:
長き夜 (nagakiyo: long night)
長き (nagaki: long)
This is an old, adjectival form used in poetry.
夜 (yo: night)
The yomi of this can be yoru or yo (as well as YA), all the while meaning “night.”
遠の眠り (tōnonemuri: deep sleep)
遠 (tō(i): distant)
The meaning is “distant.” But 遠の眠り somehow translates as “deep sleep.” I suppose that when you sleep deeply, you become distant to the world. By the way, I asked a native speaker about the form 遠の used here. He said 遠の has the same meaning as 遠い and 遠き (the literary form of 遠い). He added that 遠の must be a very old form and that native speakers never use it nowadays, except perhaps in 遠の昔 (tō no mukashi: long, long ago).
眠り (nemuri: sleep)
皆目覚め (minamezame: everyone wakes up)
皆 (mina: everyone)
目覚 (meza(meru): to wake up) eyes + to wake up波乗り船 (naminorifune: surfing boat)
波乗り (naminori: surfing) wave + to ride
船 (fune: boat)音の良きかな (otono yokikana: a good sound)
音 (oto: sound, noise)
良き (yoki: goodness; good)As for かな (kana), this is not the same かな that means “maybe.” Instead, this version slightly emphasizes the preceding words but otherwise doesn’t translate to anything in English.
Speaking of translations, here’s what the palindrome means:
They all woke up from a deep sleep during the long night, listening to the pleasant sounds of the ship as it surfed over the waves.
Finally, you may be wondering how this could be a palindrome. After all, if you compare the front and back ends of the sentence, there’s no obvious inversion:
nagakiyono … no yokikana
But you need to take it one syllable at a time, and writing the sounds in hiragana makes the mirroring clear (or clearer):
ながきよの とうのねむりの みなめざめ なみのりふねの おとの よきかな。
A couple of things don’t match up. For instance, む ≠ ふ. And が ≠ か (although if one ignores tentens, they do). Close enough? Hmph—I’d give it about a 70!
