Yo ni furedo koi mo senu mi no yū sareba suzuro ni mono no kanashiki ya nazo

English Translation

I live on, and yet
I am one who does not love
so why, when evening
comes on, should I be taken
by a sadness with no cause

Meaning

I go on living, and I am not in love with anyone. So why, when evening comes, does a sadness with no cause take hold of me?

Commentary

19 When Evening Comes

The same Lady of Nijō sent "Yo ni furedo koi mo senu mi no yū sareba suzuro ni mono no kanashiki ya nazo" to the same Prince of the Ministry of Ceremonial, because he had not come for a long time; it was autumn. His reply was "Yūgure ni mono omou toki wa kannazuki ware mo shigure ni otorazarikeri". The prose remarks that he composed badly, without putting his heart into it. The section closes with the exchange and that verdict.
The Lady of Nijō and the prince are the two of the eighteenth section, where she sent him young herbs at the New Year. This section is the autumn that followed.
The setting is autumn. The season has moved on from the New Year of the eighteenth section, and the relationship is still as distant as before.
What prompted the poem was that the prince had not come for a long time.
His reply follows, and the prose adds a verdict on it: that he composed badly, without putting his heart into it.

The first line says that she goes on living; the second declares that she is not in love.
Then, in spite of that, evening brings a sadness she cannot account for — so that the love she has just denied is left standing there after all.
The word for the sadness means that it comes without any particular cause, and she leaves the cause unnamed; the verb in the third line simply marks the arrival of evening.
The closing question asks him for an answer while quietly indicating where the answer lies. That she makes her appeal without a single word of reproach continues the manner of the young-herb poem before it.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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