Only trust in it:
that log laid across the stream
for a narrow bridge—
tread on it again and will
it not come down after all
- Meaning
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Only trust in it: that single log across the stream—tread on it again and again, and will it not come down after all?
- Commentary
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Volume Nine: Kozaishō
The empress called Kozaishō to her and said that this was a letter reproaching her for refusing to meet him; that there were limits to firmness; and that surely she might send an answer now. Then she took the brush herself and wrote this.
By this poem the two were joined. But Michimori was killed below the Minato River at Ichi-no-tani. Kozaishō, who was with child, waited on the night of the fourteenth as the boat neared Yashima until it had gone quiet, told her nurse what was in her mind, and threw herself into the sea unseen.
The reply uses the words of Michimori's poem exactly: the log across the narrow stream, the treading. Only the conclusion is reversed.
He lamented that the log turned and he fell. She answers: tread on it again, and will it not come down? Ochiru shifts from the crossing falling to the woman falling—that is, yielding. Tread often enough and it gives; keep on and she will relent.
The convention of an exchange is that one takes up the other's words in answering; here the one answering is neither the addressee nor a party to the love at all. The empress takes the brush in Kozaishō's place and makes it the reply to Michimori. The technique alone operates across rank and position.
These two poems joined them; a child was conceived; and with Michimori's death mother and child went into the sea together. The empress who wrote the encouraging verse failed to drown at Dan-no-ura and survived, to live at Ōhara in the closing chapters. Of the three, the one who lived longest was the one who wrote this poem.
tada tanome……simply rely on it.
hoso-tanigawa……a narrow ravine stream.
maroki hashi……a bridge of a single log.
fumikaeshite wa……treading on it again and again.
ochizarame ya wa……will it not come down? surely it will.
Kenreimon-in……Taira no Tokuko, daughter of Kiyomori and mother of Emperor Antoku.
Minatogawa……a river in Settsu province.
Yashima……in Sanuki province; the Taira base.
menoto no nyōbō……the woman who had nursed and raised her.
miomo……with child.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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