Even if for you
my own name goes streaming down
in disgrace, let me
become the refuse that lies
at the bottom, there with you
- Meaning
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Even if for your sake my own name streams away in disgrace, let me become the refuse at the bottom, and be there with you.
- Commentary
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Volume Ten: The Lady of the Palace
Having read Shigehira's letter, the lady could not speak for grief and lay weeping with it clutched to her. After a while she took up a brush herself, wrote of the two hard years since their parting, and at the end composed a poem and gave it to Tomotoki. This is it.
She keeps the convention of an exchange, taking up his own words: "letting an ill name stream." I shall let mine stream too, she says.
Then she goes a step further. Not merely carried along but sunk—mikuzu, the refuse that settles on a riverbed. It is the standard word for what becomes of a body that goes into the water.
The pivot is tomo ni, "together." She chooses not the keeping of her name but the same place at the bottom. He asked for one more meeting; she answers that she will be with him to the end. She returns more than was asked.
An exchange of poems is by origin a game of wit, one party taking up the other's words. Here it has become an exchange of resolutions. The technique is still that of court love poetry; only the content has been replaced.
kimi yue ni……for your sake.
uki na……an ill name.
nagasu……to let stream; taking up his river imagery.
soko……the bottom of a river or sea.
mikuzu……refuse settled in water; suggesting a drowned body.
tomo ni narinan……let me become so together with you.
Tomotoki……the warrior who carried Shigehira's letter.
zōtōka……a paired poem given and answered.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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