ひとの親の心は闇にあらねども
子を思ふ道にまどひぬるかな
子を思ふ道にまどひぬるかな
- Roma-ji
-
Hito no oya no kokoro wa yami ni aranedomo ko o omou michi ni madoinuru kana
- English Translation
-
The heart of a par-
ent is not darkness, and yet
along the pathway
of thinking about one's child
how easily it is lost
- Meaning
- A parent's heart is not darkness, and yet on the path of thinking about one's child, how easily it loses its way.
- Commentary
-
45 The Heart Is Not in Darkness
When the Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi had first sent his daughter, the Lady of the Bedchamber, into the palace, he was constantly anxious about what the emperor thought of her. So he composed this poem and presented it. The emperor was much moved. There was a reply, the prose says, but it has not been handed down.
The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, who rose to that office and took his name from his residence near the embankment of the Kamo river. He is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals and appears in the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth sections as a messenger from the palace. The Lady of the Bedchamber was his daughter, newly entered into the emperor's household.
The setting is the period just after her entry, when it was not yet clear how the emperor felt about her.
What prompted the poem was his anxiety on her behalf. It was presented to the emperor.
The emperor was much moved and composed a reply, but that poem has not come down. This one was later included in the Gosen-shū.
The poem begins by denying that a parent's heart is darkness, and its concessive grammar turns on the denial: and yet.
Losing one's way where there is no darkness is the frame of the whole poem. In the dark, anyone might go astray; that a parent goes astray in the light is what makes the case hopeless.
What he calls the path of thinking about one's child gives the poem its road, so that darkness and losing the way belong to one figure.
The closing is an exclamation of having gone astray. It is a poem asking the emperor to be kind to a daughter, and it contains no request of any kind — only a father's admission that he cannot think straight. That is presumably what moved the emperor.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- Climbing on, the height where the clouds sit on the mount- ain is far away and so the sun — and the day — come nearer with every step
- Though one flees, who then can keep from wearing it — the robe soaked through with rain so long as one goes on living under this rain, this heaven
- You will have slept well at your ease, I suppose, while I, for my part, lay awake as the dew settled and passed the night in longing
- Rising, lying down amid the white dew — for whom was all that longing I shall not take it for mine old as I am, at Iso-