Hisashiku wa omooenedomo Suminoe no matsu ya futatabi oikawaruramu

English Translation

It does not seem long
to me at all — or has the
Suminoe pine
grown up and been replaced now
for the second time over

Meaning

It has not seemed long to me. Or has the pine of Suminoe already died back and grown again a second time?

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 same house. She is answering a man who had stopped coming to her though they lived under one roof, and who now writes to say that a long time has passed.
What prompted the poem is the one he sent her, "Suminoe no matsu naranaku ni hisashiku mo kimi to nenu yo no narinikeru kana".
This reply closes the eleventh section. The prose passes no judgement on the poems; the section consists of the exchange alone.
This poem was later included in the Shūi-shū.

She takes his word for a long time and throws it straight back: it has not seemed long to her. The concessive that follows leaves room for the turn she is about to make.
Then, if he insists, perhaps enough time has passed for the pine of Suminoe to die back and grow again. The question and the supposition together hand the matter back to him.
For a pine to be replaced is for a different tree to stand in the same place, and behind that stands the man himself, changed into someone else.
Borrowing an image from the poem she is answering and turning its sense inside out is a pattern that recurs; the exchange about the grass of forgetting in the sixteenth section is built the same way.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other