Suminoe no matsu naranaku ni hisashiku mo kimi to nenu yo no narinikeru kana

English Translation

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

Meaning

I am no ancient pine of Suminoe, and still the run of nights without you at my side has grown very long indeed.

Commentary

11 The Pine of Suminoe

The late Major Counsellor Minamoto had for years been visiting the Lady of the East Wing, a daughter of Lord Tadafusa. Then his affections turned towards the young princess of the Teiji palace, and he stopped coming to her; a good while passed this way. Since there were children, however, words never wholly ceased between them, and the two went on living in the same house. In these circumstances he composed "Suminoe no matsu naranaku ni hisashiku mo kimi to nenu yo no narinikeru kana" and sent it to her, and the reply came: "Hisashiku wa omooenedomo Suminoe no matsu ya futatabi oikawaruramu". The section closes with the exchange.
The late Major Counsellor Minamoto is Minamoto no Kiyokage, a son of Emperor Yōzei, who also appears in the third section. The Lady of the East Wing was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tadafusa, and takes her name from the wing of the house she occupied. Tadafusa was known in his own right as a poet, and was the father of the Fujiwara no Chikane who appears in the thirteenth section. Of the young princess of the Teiji palace the prose tells us nothing beyond her connection with the retired Emperor Uda.
The setting is the house where the Major Counsellor and the Lady of the East Wing continued to live together. His visits had stopped, but because of the children an exchange of words had not.
What prompted the poem was simply that this state of things had gone on for some time. The situation peculiar to this section — under one roof, yet no longer sharing a bed — is what the poem takes for granted.
She answered with a poem of her own, and the exchange closes the section. The twelfth goes on to tell how he came to take the young princess as his wife.
This poem was later included in the Shūi-shū.

Suminoe is a place of poetic association in Settsu province, and its pines had long stood in poetry for great age. They are brought in here to yield the word for a long time.
The second line means: not being that, and yet. He is no pine, so nothing about him should last; and the only thing that has grown long is the stretch of nights without her.
The lower verse says that the run of nights has become so. Its final particles combine noticing with regret, giving the tone of a man realising something belatedly.
There is no reproach in it. He notes, as though it were someone else's business, that things have simply turned out this way — which is precisely what her reply will fasten on.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other