Could I have foreseen
that in this wretched body
I would come around
to look once more on the moon
of these same cloud-dwelling halls
- Meaning
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I never thought that, wretched as I am, I would come round again to look upon the same moon above these cloud-dwelling halls.
- Commentary
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Volume One: The Empress of Two Reigns
By Emperor Nijō's forced decree, the Grand Empress Dowager Tashi, once consort to the late Emperor Konoe, was placed in the unheard-of position of serving as consort to two reigns. She had written the poem "Unable to sink beneath the sorrow, river bamboo by the shore" while idly practicing her writing, and word of her state of mind somehow reached the world; people spoke of it as pitiful and hard to bear.
When the day of her entry into the palace came she had no heart for it and would not get into the carriage. Only when the night had grown late, near midnight, was she helped into it and carried to the palace. She was given the Reikeiden as her residence.
Inside, nothing had changed from Emperor Konoe's lifetime. On a sliding door of the Seiryōden was a painting attributed to Kose no Kanaoka, of the dawn moon over distant hills. When Emperor Konoe was still a child on the throne, he had idly smudged that moon with the tip of his brush and clouded it over. The mark of that mischief was still there, unchanged. Seeing it, and longing for the days when he was alive, she composed this poem.
The tale closes the chapter by saying that the affection between the late Emperor Konoe and the Grand Empress was tender and moving beyond words.
Omoiki ya is an exclamation: did I ever think it? No, I never did. The upper verse delivers the shock, and the lower verse reveals what the shock consists of.
Meguri kite carries both the sense of having come back around to the palace and the turning of the moon and of time. Kumoi means both the palace and the sky, and "moon" means both the moon painted on the door and the moon actually hanging above. The painted moon and the sky's moon are unchanged from those days—only she has been dragged back, still wretched. That is the shape of the poem.
Where the earlier verse is one of resistance before entering the palace, this one is resignation afterward. Read together, the two trace the whole course of a woman carried off by the fate of being consort to two reigns. This chapter is the only one in Volume One to hold two poems by a single speaker.
omoiki ya……did I ever think it? I never did.
ukimi……a wretched lot, a sorrowful state.
meguri kite……having come around again.
kumoi……the imperial palace; also the sky, the region of the clouds.
mimu to wa……that I should come to see.
Reikeiden……one of the palace halls; Tashi's residence.
Seiryōden……the hall where the emperor spent his daily life.
Kose no Kanaoka……a court painter of the early Heian period.
temasaguri……idle play of the hand; a casual pastime.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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