classic waka stream

That I shall return
is hard—as at Katata
no water is held
in the mesh of the drawn nets,
so my tears will not stay held

Meaning
That I shall return is hard to hope for; and as the drawn nets at Katata hold no water in their mesh, so my eyes cannot hold my tears.
Commentary
Volume Twelve: The Exile of the Major Counselor

　After the Taira had fallen, and Yoshitomo's head had been buried in a new tomb with the Shōchōju-in built over it, Kamakura announced the disposal of the Taira who had been held in the capital.
　Tokitada was sent to Noto, Tokizane to Kazusa, Nobumoto to Aki, Masaakira to the island of Oki, the bishop Zenshin to Awa, the superintendent Nōen to Bingo, and the master Chūkai to Musashi.
　Tokitada went to take his final leave of Kenreimon-in at Yoshida. I am ordered to Noto, he said, and set out for my place of exile today. I had meant, whatever it cost, to stay in the capital and be of some use to you; and now that I cannot, I think of nothing but how you will manage, and I can hardly bring myself to go. He wept as he spoke, and she, unable to hold back her own tears, said that of all those she had known he alone was left, and that with that one gone she would be desolate beyond words—who would come to her now?
　Tokitada was the brother of the late Kenshunmon-in and a maternal kinsman of Emperor Takakura; his elder sister was Kiyomori's wife, and the splendors of the world had been his for the taking. He rose to Major Counselor of the senior second rank and was three times head of the Imperial Police, in which office he did some brutal things without hesitation: robbers and thieves he caught were cut off at the right elbow and driven out, so that he earned the name of the wicked commissioner. It was he who branded the face of a messenger carrying the cloistered emperor's order to the west. His son-in-law Yoshitsune interceded for him in various ways, and the exile was ordered all the same.
　His son Tokiie, sixteen, was spared and stayed with an uncle; at his father's departure he and his mother took a parting without end. Once such a parting is made, parent and child, husband and wife, will almost certainly not see each other again. Until recently he had been living hard on the waves of the western sea and had watched his house destroyed before his eyes; today he set out for a northern province far from any settlement. His state of mind was desolate past describing.
　When at length he had left the capital and come to the shore at Katata in Ōmi, the Major Counselor wept and composed this.

　It is built on a doubled pun. Kata in Katata carries katashi, "hard, unlikely": returning is unlikely, he says at once. And Katata is known for its fishing, which brings in the drawn nets.
　No water stays in the mesh of a net. In the same way no tears stay in his eyes; they run over. Tamaranu holds both meanings, the net's mesh and his own eyes.
　From a place name he draws "unlikely"; from the trade of the place, the net; from the nature of the net, the impossibility of holding back tears. Using only the name of a place he happened to pass and the work he saw done there, he says at once that he cannot return and that he is weeping. As craft it is among the denser poems in the Tale of the Heike.
　Poems of parting built on place names run through the work: the Bay of Ari in Volume Four, the Ōsaka barrier in Volume Eleven. The first was shipboard entertainment; the second asked whether there would be a return. This one states at the outset that return is unlikely and leaves nothing to ask.
　Tokitada died in Noto and never came back to the capital. He is the man to whom the saying is attributed that anyone not of the Taira was not a person at all. What he composed at the last was a poem about water running out of a net—about being able to hold nothing. Of all the poems composed by members of the Taira house, this is the last.

kaerikon……to come back.
kata……puns on katashi, "hard," and on the place name Katata.
Katata……a fishing village on the west shore of Lake Biwa in Ōmi.
hiku ami……a drag net.
me……the mesh of a net; also the eye.
tamaranu……does not collect; also cannot be held back.
Tokitada……brother of Kiyomori's wife and of Kenshunmon-in.
Kebiishi no bettō……head of the Imperial Police.
aku-bettō……the wicked commissioner; Tokitada's nickname.
Kenreimon-in……Taira no Tokuko, then living at Yoshida.
Shōchōju-in……the temple Yoritomo built for his father Yoshitomo.
Source
Heike Monogatari
Other