Omoiki ya suginishi hito no kanashiki ni kimi sae tsuraku naramu mono to wa

English Translation

Could I have foreseen
that on top of my sorrow
for the one now gone
even you would turn away
and grow cold towards me too

Meaning

Who could have foreseen it? On top of my grief for the one who is gone, even you would turn cold on me.

Commentary

13 Weeping and Bearing It

Fujiwara no Chikane, a third-rank officer of the Right Horse Bureau, had a wife named Toshiko. They had many children and were devoted to one another, but she died, and Chikane went about his days in unbounded grief. A woman known as the Lady of Ichijō, a chamberlain in the palace, had been very close to Toshiko. Yet at this of all times she did not come, and Chikane was wondering at it when he met a servant woman of hers. He entrusted her with "Omoiki ya suginishi hito no kanashiki ni kimi sae tsuraku naramu mono to wa", and the reply came: "Naki hito o kimi ga kikaku ni kakeji tote nakunaku shinobu hodo na urami so". The section closes with the exchange.
Fujiwara no Chikane held the third rank in the Right Horse Bureau and was a son of Fujiwara no Tadafusa, known as a poet; Tadafusa's daughter appears in the eleventh section as the Lady of the East Wing. Toshiko was Chikane's wife, entrusted with the preparations for the retired emperor's celebration in the third section and composing a poem of condolence in the ninth. The Lady of Ichijō was a chamberlain in the palace and had been close to Toshiko.
The setting is the period after Toshiko's death, while Chikane was passing his days in grief. The Lady of Ichijō, who had been close to her, had not come to offer condolence.
What prompted the poem was a chance meeting with that woman's servant. He entrusted the poem to her.
The Lady of Ichijō answered with a poem of her own, and the exchange closes the section. The death of the Toshiko who composed poems in the third and ninth sections is recorded here.

It begins by putting the shock first, in a rhetorical question: could I have thought it — meaning that he could not.
The upper verse states his grief for his wife; the lower sets her coldness alongside it. The particle meaning even does the work of showing the grief doubling.
The last line breaks off, its verb unstated, so that the poem has to be closed by returning to the question it opened with.
It is a poem of reproach, but the whole of the charge is that she has not come, and it goes no further than that.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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