I've worked harder than hardest,
Yet I'm no better off;
I only look down at my bony hands.
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he feels he has nothing to show for all his work, is how I feel. you work at something, and in the end, it doesn't matter. It was only in the moment that you worked, that it mattered and afterwards -- there is nothing. It is an inevitable feeling, I suspect.
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On first reading this, I started to assume he worked with his hands, (as in the sense a farmer or builder does.) But looking into his bio I see he was a writer and some of his work was not published until after his death, I wonder if it was these works which he my be refering to. Could that be the hard work which has left him, no better off?
Andrew -
Old? If the biography is correct he was born in 1886, that makes him 24 in 1900, dieing in 1912 at 36y.o. I think he's saying that when motivated he's worked as hard as he could but afterwards, at the end of it all, he's still the same man looking down at the same hands. 'only' looking at his hands- not looking at what he owns or has done.
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Seems like a reflection, a life that 'he' has led that was hard and he worked harder than most, or at least in his interpretation from his life to most others, he has. But, he realises he's no better off, whether from the emptiness within or from other people as well.
And then the realisation that he's just old and decrepit. It's a bit solemn I feel. A good piece by Takuboku.
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