Koto naraba harezu mo aranamu akigiri no magire ni mienu kimi to omowamu

English Translation

If it comes to that
I would have it never lift
and think of you as
someone hidden from my sight
by the autumn mist alone

Meaning

If it comes to that, I would rather it never lifted — so that I could think of you as someone the autumn mist merely hides from sight.

Commentary

28 In the Morning Mist

In the autumn of the year in which Kaisen's father, an officer of the Palace Guards, had died, his friends gathered at the house and drank together from nightfall. Guests and host alike spoke with longing of the man who was gone. Towards daybreak, in the half-light, the mist came rolling in, and one of the guests composed "Asagiri no naka ni kimi masu mono naraba haruru manimani ureshikaramashi". Kaisen's reply was "Koto naraba harezu mo aranamu akigiri no magire ni mienu kimi to omowamu". The guests were Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori and others. That is the whole of the section.
Kaisen is the priest of the twenty-seventh section, where he lives in the hills and falls out with his parent. Here we learn that his father held a post as second officer in the Palace Guards. Ki no Tsurayuki and Ki no Tomonori, named among the guests, were both compilers of the Kokin-shū.
The setting is the same half-light of dawn. The host, Kaisen, is answering the guest who has just spoken.
What prompted the poem is the guest's, "Asagiri no naka ni kimi masu mono naraba haruru manimani ureshikaramashi", with its supposition about the mist lifting.
This reply closes the twenty-eighth section. The prose ends by naming the guests: Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori and others.

The opening phrase means: if that is how it is, then rather this — taking up the other poem's condition and turning from it.
The wish in the second line is directed outward, at the mist: let it not lift. Where the guest pinned his hope on the mist clearing, Kaisen hopes precisely the opposite.
The fourth line makes the dead man someone the mist merely hides. So long as it does not lift, the not-seeing can be blamed on the mist; once it lifts, the absence is confirmed.
The closing verb is one of resolve: this is what I shall think. Taking the other's words and reversing the direction of the wish is the same pattern as the exchanges in the sixteenth and twenty-first sections.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other