Our meeting, and this
life of mine light as the dew—
tonight, is it that
both of them together come
to their ending here at once
- Meaning
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Our meeting, and this life of mine as light as dew—is it that tonight both come to their end at once?
- Commentary
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Volume Ten: The Lady of the Palace
It was settled that Shigehira would be sent down to Kamakura, and before that he was allowed to see the lady once. She came by carriage to Hachijō-Horikawa. Told that the guards were watching and that she must not step out of the carriage, Shigehira put his own head in under the blind. The moment their eyes met, both their faces were wet. They took each other's hands and pressed their faces together and stayed so a while without speaking.
When we went west, he said, I wanted so much to come and take leave of you, and in the confusion it was not allowed, and I set off without a word; I have never stopped being sorry for it. After we arrived I meant to write and to have an answer, and with one battle after another it was never possible, and the months and years went by with it on my mind. And perhaps it is only because I have come to this wretched state that I have been able to see you once more. As he spoke the tears kept coming.
Their talk showed no sign of ending, and the night grew late. It is dangerous these days—go home now, quickly: driving himself to say it, he had the carriage brought out. As they parted he gave her this poem.
"A life like dew" is a commonplace for transience, but here the man is genuinely without a tomorrow. The stock phrase recovers its literal force.
The working word is morotomo ni, both together. He sets the meeting and the life side by side and says that both end tonight. The end of a love and the end of a life are treated as one ending.
In the earlier poem he asked for one more meeting, and it was granted. On the night it is granted, he says it is the last. Fulfillment and loss fall on the same evening.
The ran of kagiri naruran is conjectural, not assertive—it leaves room for not knowing. That room only makes it bleaker.
au koto……a meeting between lovers.
tsuyu no inochi……a life as brief as dew.
morotomo ni……both together.
koyoi bakari……only tonight.
kagiri……the end, the last.
naruran……would it be? conjectural.
sudare……a hanging blind on a carriage or room.
Hachijō-Horikawa……Shigehira's lodging.
Kamakura……Yoritomo's seat of power.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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