As in ancient days
the rustic weaver’s spool
is wound back again,
would that there were some means now
to make the past the present.

Meaning

Just as the rustic weaver’s spool of old is wound back again, I wish there were some way to make the past into the present.

Commentary

Episode Thirty-Two: "The rustic weaver’s spool"

A certain man composed this poem to a woman with whom he had once spoken intimately.
He longed for the happy days that had passed and, stirred by the wavering of his heart, sought to draw her toward him again, but the woman gave no reply.
That there was no reply may show the contrast between the woman’s sense of reality and the man’s lingering attachment to the past.

This poem is also well known in the form beginning "Shizu ya shizu," sung and danced by Shizuka Gozen before Minamoto no Yoritomo, recalling Yoshitsune.

Source

Ise Monogatari

Other

Our meeting seems but like the cord between the gems, so brief it appears; your unfeeling heart seems to stretch on long and long.
If one without sin is made the object of curse, they say that forget- grass will upon one’s own self grow there upon one’s own self.
From the reed-grown shore as the tide comes rising in and ever increases, so toward you my heart thinks and ever more swells on.
In the hidden cove how could the heart that I hold be known in such wise, as with the punting pole one sounds and knows the depth below?

As in ancient days the rustic weaver’s spool is wound back again, would that there were some means now to make the past the present.

As in ancient days
the rustic weaver’s spool
is wound back again,
would that there were some means now
to make the past the present.