I cannot bear it;
my heart is off in the sky—
far Michinoku,
the salt kilns of Chika: near,
and nearness does me no good
- Meaning
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I cannot bear it, and my heart is off in the sky—like the salt kilns of Chika in far Michinoku, she is near, and her nearness does me no good at all.
- Commentary
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Volume Six: Kogō
To console the emperor, sunk in tears over the loss of Aoi-no-mae, Empress Tokuko sent him one of her own ladies, Kogō. She was the daughter of the Sakuramachi Middle Counselor Shigenori, said to be the greatest beauty at court, and a master of the zither besides.
Kogō was also the woman whose love the Reizei Lesser Captain Takafusa had at last won out of a crowd of suitors. Takafusa, forgetting even his wife, a daughter of Kiyomori, had been visiting her constantly. Now she was summoned by the emperor and had no choice but to enter the palace.
Takafusa was left with nothing. To contend with an emperor for a woman's favor was unthinkable. But he could not forget her, and would come to the palace on no business at all, wandering back and forth all day near the quarters of the ladies-in-waiting. From behind her blind Kogō could read his agitation exactly. It was hard for her too; but once she had become the emperor's, nothing careless was permitted her.
When she still would not show herself or speak a word, Takafusa lost patience one day and threw a poem in through the blind where she was. This is it.
The salt kilns of Chika in Michinoku form a poetic place name used here as a preface leading into chikaki, "near." She is close by, in the same palace, and the closeness is worth nothing.
"My heart is off in the sky" is the state of a man whose mind will not stay with him. From "sky" the poem opens out to distant Michinoku and then folds back to "near." A far-off place name is fetched in only so that the poem can arrive at nearness. The paradox of a distance too small to cross is held inside that fold.
This Takafusa is the same man who, in Volume Four, answered the retired emperor's command on the voyage home from Itsukushima with an impromptu verse on the Bay of Ari. There it was a congratulatory piece for a shipboard gathering; here it is a poem thrown through a blind. The same man's verse appears in two entirely different registers.
omoikane……unable to bear the feeling.
kokoro wa sora ni……the mind gone off into the air.
Michinoku……the far northern provinces.
Chika no Shiogama……the salt kilns of Chika, a poetic place name; leads into "near."
kainashi……of no avail.
misu……a bamboo blind.
tsubone……a room assigned to a lady at court.
Sakuramachi no Chūnagon Shigenori……Fujiwara no Shigenori, who appears in Volume One.
jokotoba……a preface phrase set before a word to introduce it.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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