Wasuraru na wasure ya shinuru harugasumi kesa tachinagara chigiritsuru koto

English Translation

Do not forget me
nor shall I ever forget
this morning, standing
as the spring haze stood — standing
there, what we promised each other

Meaning

Do not forget me; nor shall I forget. This morning, as the spring haze rose, we stood there and made our promise.

Commentary

64 The Haze of Spring

Heichū had been keeping a woman he was fond of in the same house as his wife; and his wife, hating it, railed at her and drove her out. Perhaps because he could not go against his wife, Heichū, fond as he was of the woman, could not keep her. His wife's tongue being what it was, he could not even come close; he leaned against a screen some four feet high, standing half hidden behind it, and said to the woman that the ways of men and women went as they would and not as one wished, and that wherever she went she should not forget to write, and that he would do the same. She was packing her things into a bundle, waiting for the carriage she had called. He felt the sadness of it. Presently she was gone. Some time later she sent him this poem.
Heichū is Taira no Sadafun, known as a great lover, who also appears in the forty-sixth section. Of the woman driven out and of the wife the prose gives no names.
The setting is Heichū's house, on the morning when she was waiting for her carriage with her things bundled up. The spring haze in the poem tells us the season.
What prompted the poem was the promise made at that parting. It was sent some time after she left.
The section ends with the poem; no reply and no later event is recorded.

The first words are a prohibition addressed to him: do not forget.
What follows asks whether she would forget — meaning that she will not. Having asked it of him, she answers for herself.
The spring haze is a fixed epithet attached to the verb for rising, and it leads into the line that follows; at the same time it is the actual weather of that morning.
The verb in the fourth line covers both the rising of the haze and standing on one's feet. The prose has told us that Heichū spoke while standing propped against a screen, and that posture is exactly what the word holds. What the narrative described in prose is taken up whole into the language of the poem.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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