Toshi o hete nurewataritsuru koromode o kyō no namida ni kuchi ya shinuramu

English Translation

These sleeves of mine, which
for years on end have been wet
through and wet again
will today's tears be the ones
that rot them away for good

Meaning

These sleeves of mine, wet through year after year — will today's tears be the ones that finally rot them away?

Commentary

58 Kurozuka

While Taira no Kanemori was in Michinoku, a man descended from the Kan'in prince was living at a place called Kurozuka, and Kanemori teased his daughters as country ogres, composing "Michinoku no Adachigahara no Kurozuka ni oni komoreri to kiku wa makoto ka" and the like. In time he asked for one of the daughters in marriage, but her father said only that she was still very young and that when the proper time came — . Kanemori had to return to the capital, and likening the girl to the yellow roses of Ide he composed "Hanazakari sugi mo ya suru to kawazu naku Ide no yamabuki ushirometashi mo". As for Kurozuka: there was a wife of Lord Tsunetada who worked the name of the hot spring called the Natori Bath into a poem, and she it was who was mistress of Kurozuka. When she composed "Ōzora no kumo no kayoiji mite shi kana tori nomi yukeba ato wa ka mo nashi", Kanemori heard it and composed in the same manner "Shiogama no ura ni wa ama ya taenikemu nado sunadori no miyuru toki naki". As for the girl on whom Kanemori had set his heart, what he had feared came to pass. She came up to the capital with another man; and Kanemori, not knowing it, wrote asking why she had not let him know she had come. She sent back the very poem he had made about the yellow roses of Ide, saying it was his present. Understanding at last that he had been refused, he composed "Toshi o hete nurewataritsuru koromode o kyō no namida ni kuchi ya shinuramu" and sent it. That is the whole of the section.
Taira no Kanemori is one of the thirty-six poetic immortals; he exchanges poems with the Lady of Hyōe in the fifty-sixth section and with the daughter of Taira no Nakaki in the fifty-seventh. The man at Kurozuka was a descendant of the Kan'in prince, and his daughters are the ones Kanemori teased. Of Lord Tsunetada's wife the prose says only that she was mistress of Kurozuka.
The setting is the capital. The girl on whom Kanemori had set his heart had come up to it with another man.
What prompted the poem was this: not knowing, he wrote to ask why she had not told him she had come, and she sent back the poem he had once made about the yellow roses of Ide, saying it was his present.
The section closes with this poem. Beginning with his teasing about ogres at Kurozuka, it ends with a failed proposal and this.

The opening says that for years on end the sleeves have been wet, its verb marking a continuing action: a long succession of days of weeping.
The word in the third line is the sleeve. Tears were caught in the sleeve, and the state of a sleeve had long been the measure of grief.
The word for today carries the sound of the word for the capital, so that the day of his refusal and the place of it are heard together.
The closing asks whether today's tears will finish them. Sleeves wet for years are to be destroyed by one day's weeping. A section that opened with a man joking about ogres ends with him lamenting the rotting of his own sleeves.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other