あらばこそはじめもはても思ほえめ
今日にも逢はで消えにしものを
今日にも逢はで消えにしものを
- Roma-ji
-
Araba koso hajime mo hate mo omooeme kyō ni mo awade kienishi mono o
- English Translation
-
Were he still alive
beginnings and ends would come
into my mind, but
he vanished without meeting
even this day we mark now
- Meaning
- If he were living, beginnings and endings might mean something to me. But he went out like a light without ever reaching this day.
- Commentary
-
9 The End of Autumn
The Prince of Momozono, Minister of Military Affairs, had died, and the service marking the first anniversary was held at the end of the ninth month. Toshiko sent "Ōkata no aki no hate dani kanashiki ni kyō wa ikadeka kimi kurasuramu" to the prince's widow. It reached her as she sat weeping, wholly given over to her grief, and she answered with "Araba koso hajime mo hate mo omooeme kyō ni mo awade kienishi mono o". The section closes with the exchange.
Toshiko was the wife of Fujiwara no Chikane, a third-rank officer of the Right Horse Bureau, and appears repeatedly in this book as a poet: in the third section she is entrusted with the preparations for the retired emperor's celebration, and in the thirteenth her death is recorded. Of the Prince of Momozono the prose tells us only the place he lived and the office he held. The Lady of the North was his principal wife.
The setting is the same anniversary day, at the widow's house. When the poem reached her, the prose says, she was weeping, wholly given over to her grief.
What prompted her poem was the one Toshiko had sent, "Ōkata no aki no hate dani kanashiki ni kyō wa ikadeka kimi kurasuramu", with its question about how she was passing the day.
This reply closes the ninth section. No comment from the narrator follows; the section consists of the two poems alone.
Her first line means that only the living have beginnings and endings worth minding, and an emphatic particle governing the verb makes the limitation absolute.
Toshiko's poem was built on the marking of a season's close; this one replies that for the dead no such marking exists. She removes the frame the other poem stood in.
The verb for his death means to go out or fade, the way dew or snow goes, and avoids naming death directly.
The final particle is a concessive one carrying regret, and the poem breaks off rather than concludes. Offered consolation, she removes the ground the consolation stood on.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- Though the water-stems of the Ōsawa pond break why should I complain of Saga's coldness, or yours — such being your own nature
- Even the plain end of any autumn is sad how then will you spend this day of all days — how will you live your way through today
- My old home — is that it? — I cross the river now and look at it too Deep pools turn to shallows: how rightly the old saying goes
- I am no old pine of Suminoe, and yet how long it has grown this run of nights I have lain without you beside me here