Thanks again everyone for the help, WK community is great 
We are deep in winter now, the trees have all lost their leaves, and the flowers that were once so bright seem today like a dream. The contemplation of the seasons make us meditate about the brievity of our lives, the fugacity of all things… something that, perhaps, we don’t think about enough when we are taken in the grind of daily life. But the reality is that, as the days flow one after the other, death is always one step closer. We don’t like to look at her, but death can help us to appreciate so much more our living time.
And yet, even the people who contemplate their mortality are still surprised the day it finally comes, like in this poem that I was reading ; the 861th of the 古今和歌集, written by なりひらの朝臣 :
つひにゆく
みちとはかねて
ききしかど
きのふけふとは
おもはざりしを
I have already read several translations of this poem but I still looked up the words I didn’t know in the kobun dictionary, and then I tried to understand it to finally reformulate a translation in my words :
At the end of life
I have heard there is a path
that we all follow ;
but yesterday I never thought
I would need to go today…
For me one of the most beautiful poems of the Kokinshû, very touching. We all know that we are mortal beings, we all know that we will need to die one day… but is anyone really prepared for the day it finally comes ? We can’t (unfortunately ?) procrastinate with our demise. And I think it’s useful to regularly remind ourselves this fact. Death can help us to live, and to fully enjoy every unique moment…